


The Butterfly Effect

by OfEndlessWonder



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Post-Crisis, a whole buttload of angst, canon compliant (or as close you can get after not watching this show for the past three seasons), it's been 84 years and i'm still not over these two idiots being soft, with a happy ending tho ofc
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-22
Updated: 2020-07-06
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:48:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 49,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22852003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OfEndlessWonder/pseuds/OfEndlessWonder
Summary: 'She risked a glance over at her companion, and nearly had a heart attack when she recognised the face on the pillow next to hers. Panicked, she scrambled out of the bed as fast as she possibly could, her breaths coming quick and fast and she wondered if this was what it was like to have an anxiety attack. Because that… that was Cat Grant sleeping peacefully beside her.' An exploration of what life for Kara could be like, in my wishful-thinking world, post-crisis. Namely, what would happen if she woke up next to Cat, and not on her couch, on Earth-Prime.
Relationships: Kara Danvers/Cat Grant
Comments: 410
Kudos: 960





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'm baaaaaaack. 
> 
> After watching the cross-over episodes I got to thinking about how different things could be for Kara on this new world, and this story is the result. I haven't finished writing it yet, but I'm hopefully far enough ahead to be able to post a chapter a week. 
> 
> I hope you guys enjoy!!

Kara woke with a startled gasp, in an unfamiliar bed and with an arm slung around her waist.

Sunlight streamed through the slits in the blinds, and Kara’s heart raced as she took stock of her surroundings, as she let the memories of the past few… (how long had they been stuck at the Vanishing Point? Weeks? Months? She’d lost track of time a long time ago) wash over her, feeling a flutter of panic in her chest when the body beside her stirred.

Kara’s pulse was so loud in her ears that it was hard for her to think, and she shifted, turning onto her side, silken sheets sliding over her skin, and oh, god, she was _naked_ under there, and how the hell had that happened?

The last thing she remembered was winning the fight, Oliver collapsing, the lights arcing through the sky, and then… nothing. She had no idea how she’d ended up here, where _here_ even was, no idea why she was naked and certainly no idea who she was lying next to.

She risked a glance over at her companion, and nearly had a heart attack when she recognised the face on the pillow next to hers. Panicked, she scrambled out of the bed as fast as she possibly could, her breaths coming quick and fast and she wondered if this was what it was like to have an anxiety attack.

Because that… that was _Cat Grant_ sleeping peacefully beside her.

Cat Grant who Kara hadn’t seen in person since she’d saved her from falling out of that plane, Cat Grant who had left CatCo to dive and moved to D.C., Cat Grant who had been Kara’s boss for so long, Cat Grant who Kara had used to harbour a secret, impossible crush on, back when they’d used to spend hours together every day.

Kara hadn’t set her eyes on Cat in months, and she couldn’t resist the opportunity to drink her in. Kara had never seen her face bereft of make-up, of that carefully-applied mask she’d used to wear like armour, but she was still beautiful, her face relaxed in sleep, her hair mussed (was that from Kara’s hands? She desperately tried to search her mind for some memory of how she had ended up in Cat’s bed, but came up empty), and she left Kara breathless that same way she always had whenever she’d stalked into a room.

Cat stirred, the sheets falling down to her waist, and Kara yelped because Cat was naked, too, and she was quick to look away because she was sure she couldn’t survive the sight of Cat’s bare chest, felt _wrong_ for looking at her in a state of such vulnerability, not when she didn’t know what the hell was going on.

Had they lost the battle? Had she died, and this was her version of heaven? Kara didn’t know, but she _did_ know that she had to find out. A quick scan with her x-ray vision revealed that her clothes were in one of the closets (did she live here? With _Cat_? What the _Rao_ was happening?), and as quietly as she could, Kara utilised her superspeed to slip into her suit and then out of Cat’s window, flying to the DEO at breakneck speed.

//

“Alex? Oh, thank god you’re here.” Kara had never been so relieved to see her sister, pulled her into a tight hug because there had been a point where she’d thought she’d never see Alex again. “You have to help me.”

“What’s wrong?” Alex snapped into concerned big sister mode in an instant, frowning as Kara pulled her into an empty room.

“I woke up next to _Cat Grant_ this morning,” Kara hissed, barely able to say the words aloud, and Alex’s frown deepened.

“Um… yeah? That’s what happens when you move in with someone?”

“What do you mean?” Kara’s voice climbed in pitch and Alex winced. “I didn’t move in with her! I haven’t even seen her for years! Why are you not surprised?!”

“Are you okay?” Alex studied Kara closely. “Did you go out drinking last night? Or did you hit your head?”

“ _No_ , I didn’t hit my head, Alex!” Kara dodged out the way of her sister hands as she reached for Kara’s face.

“Then why are you acting like a crazy person?”

“I’m not! _You_ are! Talking about me and Cat like it… like it makes _sense_. Like it’s not completely impossible!” Kara was practically shouting by that point, but she was agitated and panicking, and why wasn’t Alex _helping_? “Cat left National City three years ago.”

“What are you talking about? Cat never left.” Alex looked troubled. “Kara, I really think we ought to go to the medbay and get you checked out. You’re acting weird. Really weird.”

“I’m _fine_.” She wasn’t fine – she was far from fine, but it seemed like she wasn’t going to get the answers she needed from her sister. “I have to go.”

“Kara, wait - ” Alex reached for her, but Kara shook her off, hurrying towards the door and slamming straight into J’onn who was standing on the other side – he reached out to steady her, and the second that their eyes met, she knew that she wasn’t going crazy, that he remembered, too, and nearly collapsed in relief.

“It really happened?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, thank Rao,” she breathed, sagging back against the wall. “But why… why doesn’t anyone else remember?”

“Remember _what_?” Alex asked, coming to stand beside Kara. “You’re _both_ acting weird.”

“I think I can help with that.” J’onn touched a hand to Alex’s forehead, and Kara watched as Alex’s eyes went from scrunched up in confusion to wide with understanding. “Memories restored.”

“Holy shit.” Alex’s eyes landed on Kara and widened even further. “Holy shit, Kara! Cat Grant?”

“It’s not like I had any say in this!” Kara exclaimed, because Alex was looking at her like she’d committed treason. “I have no idea what’s happening!”

“I believe when we reset the timeline, we may have made a few… alterations,” J’onn said, voice soothing as he squeezed Kara’s shoulder. “I’m not sure to what extent, but I imagine that will come to light over the next few days.”

“Well, that’s just wonderful.” Kara felt like her head was spinning, like her world wasn’t her own anymore, had never felt so out of control and she _hated_ it. “What other surprises are waiting to spring themselves on me?”

“Um,” Alex spoke up, looking worried, and Kara braced herself for whatever was coming next. “About that…”

//

So, not only was Kara in an apparently serious relationship with her former boss that she had absolutely no recollection of, but Lex Luthor was apparently a good guy and oh yeah, her _new_ boss.

She was relieved when there was a disturbance downtown that required her attention, because she really, _really_ needed to hit something.

Except when she got there, Barry was there, too, and her day of weirdness seemed like it was only just beginning.

Because her world really _wasn’t_ her own anymore.

She and Barry shared the same world, the same earth, and it appeared that at some point in resetting the timeline, they’d managed to erase the multiverse and all of the earths and create just one single one, instead.

The ramifications of that were too much for Kara to bear, and she supposed the differences were starting to make more sense – this earth was an amalgamation of countless others, and there was no wonder that some things would be different.

That didn’t mean her new life was easy for her to come to terms with.

It would have been easier if she hadn’t been a paragon, if she just… didn’t remember, like everyone else. Then she wouldn’t be so confused, wouldn’t be questioning everything, wondering what was still real and what memories and experiences had never occurred in this strange new place.

She’d watched National City crash and burn along with Argo and the rest of Earth-38, but now, as she stood on the roof of the DEO building and surveyed the city that looked so familiar but felt so alien, she felt like she was saying goodbye all over again.

Her phone buzzed in her pocket, and Kara pulled it out only to see Cat’s name flashing on the screen and quickly pressed ignore. She’d rung several times that morning, sent texts that Kara had deleted before she could read them, because she didn’t know how to cope with it all.

Cat was probably worried sick, and that wasn’t fair, but Kara couldn’t speak to her, not when she had no idea what she could possibly say.

To Kara, they were practically strangers – she still thought of Cat often, but they hadn’t spoken in years, been face-to-face in much longer – but to Cat, they were in love, and that made Kara’s head spin until she felt dizzy, and she had to step away from the building’s edge lest she tumble down to the ground.

Behind her, the door creaked open, and Kara didn’t even have to look to know that it was Alex, coming to check on her.

“Hey.” She came to stand beside Kara, the wind whipping through her hair. “How are you holding up?”

Kara’s laugh was bitter, and Alex winced. “Never been better.”

“I’m sorry.” Alex reached out to squeeze her arm, and Kara leant into the touch, wishing it could bring her the comfort she so desperately craved. “I can’t even imagine how you’re feeling. It’s… it’s a lot.”

Kara’s phone, still in her hand, buzzed again, and Kara held it so tightly that the case cracked.

“Are you not going to answer?” Alex asked, seeing Cat’s name, and Kara shook her head so violently that she nearly pulled something.

“I _can’t_.” It made her panic, because what could she say? How could she pretend that everything was fine when she felt like everything was falling apart? “Do you… do you remember it all? Like… what actually happened, and what didn’t?”

“It’s fuzzy, but yeah, I do.”

“Was I… were _we_ happy?”

Alex didn’t answer at first – she studied Kara for one long moment, chewing on her bottom lip. “Honestly? You were the happiest I’ve ever seen you.” Alex spoke softly, but it did nothing to cushion the blow of the words, the sucker punch they sent straight into Kara’s chest.

“And you were… you were okay with it?” Kara had never told Alex of her crush on Cat, because she knew her disapproval would be epic, didn’t think she’d ever understand that there was so much more to Cat beneath that prickly exterior.

“Not at first.” It was so strange, that Alex had these memories when to Kara it was such an impossibility. "But seeing you together… it won me over. You were good together.”

“This is so messed up,” Kara groaned, running a frustrated hand through her hair. “The two of us together doesn’t even make any sense! How did it even happen?”

“You really want to know all of this stuff?” Alex asked, and Kara nodded, accepting that it would open a can of worms and probably send her spiralling. “You know when Cat decided she was going to step away from CatCo?” Kara nodded, because that was at least familiar from her own timeline. “Well, you went to say goodbye, but you couldn’t bear the thought of her leaving without knowing how you really felt about her, so you kissed her.”

Kara remembered that night from her own memory, of hugging Cat goodbye and wishing she never had to let her go, of how it had felt like her heart was breaking, when she’d watched her walk away.

“Of course, you snuck around for like six months before you actually _told_ me any of this, even though I caught the two of you in a compromising position about four times before then.” Alex had a fond smile on her face that quickly faded as she sighed. “None of that was real, was it?”

“It was real to her,” Kara murmured, as her phone rang again, and she realised what she had to do, then – she couldn’t ignore Cat forever, and it wasn’t fair to continue to the charade, not when Cat would instantly know that something was wrong. “I have to go and find J’onn.”

“You’re going to restore her memories, aren’t you?”

“It’s the right thing to do.”

“And if she takes it badly?” Alex asked, blocking Kara’s path to the door. “That Cat you knew, Kara… she didn’t know you were Supergirl. She didn’t have any loyalty to you, hell, she almost outed you to the world.”

“So, what, I’m just supposed to pretend that everything is fine? Fake a relationship with her? Break up with her for no reason?” Kara shook her head. “No, this is the right thing to do. And if we really _were_ so good together, I don’t think she’d do that to me.”

Decision made, Kara strode past her sister to go in search of J’onn, praying that she was right.

//

“Oh, so you _are_ still alive.” Cat stood, in all her sarcastic glory, in the centre of the living room of her and Kara’s apartment, her hands on her hips as she shot Kara her best withering glare, and the sight of her, in her pencil skirt and blouse, straight out of Kara’s memories, took her breath away.

“Sorry.” It wasn’t hard for Kara to be sheepish, slipping back into her old assistant’s persona. “I, um, I had a lot of things to do.”

“Hm.” Cat pursed her lips, annoyed, and Kara fought the urge to shrink back against the doorframe, wondering how she’d fared whenever she and Cat had argued. “J’onn.” Cat blinked in surprise when she noticed him standing behind Kara’s shoulder. “Sorry, I didn’t see you there.”

“No worries.” J’onn was fighting the urge not to glance around the apartment with curious eyes, and Kara was right there with him, didn’t want to see the evidence of her life with Cat when she was about to rip it away for good.

“Is everything alright?” Cat asked, eyes narrowing as she glanced between Kara and J’onn’s faces. “Has something happened? Is it Alex?” Cat looked so worried that it made Kara’s heart ache, because for her to care so much about her sister they must’ve been close, must have been _family_ , and that was all Kara had ever wanted, desperately wished that she could remember what it had felt like.

“No, Alex is fine,” Kara was quick to reassure her. “It’s… well, it’s kind of hard to explain.” Kara hadn’t really had time to come up with a speech.

“Is this why you’ve been acting so odd?” Cat asked. “Why I watched you scuttle out of the window this morning like you’d just woken up from a one night stand you regretted?”

“You were awake?” Kara asked, horrified.

“Your scramble to leave wasn’t exactly subtle, Kara,” Cat sighed, looking tired. “So, what is it? Your latest monster of the week give you amnesia?” It was close enough to the truth that Kara drew in a sharp breath, and beside her, J’onn winced. “Is that… don’t tell me that’s true?”

“Not exactly.” Kara watched Cat’s frown deepen and ached to wipe it away. “But it’s not exactly far from the truth, either.”

Kara was relieved when J’onn stepped in to explain, far more clearly than Kara would have ever been able to do.

“I don’t believe you,” Cat said, when he was finished, shaking her head. “That can’t be true.” She stepped close, into Kara’s space, and when she reached out a hand to cup Kara’s cheek, Kara couldn’t help but flinch and she hated the pain that blossomed in Cat’s eyes. “You really don’t… you don’t remember any of it?”

“I’m sorry,” Kara whispered, and she wished she did, but she knew she never would (she’d asked J’onn, if his ability to restore memories would work the other way, if she could know what ‘other’ Kara’s life had been like, but he’d said it simply wasn’t possible).

The look in Cat’s eyes as she realised that Kara was telling the truth would haunt her for the rest of her life.

She’d never seen someone look like that, so defeated, all the fight and the hope and the light going out of her with a trembling gasp, and Kara knew it would take her a long time to heal.

“J’onn can give you your memories back. The real ones.”

Cat flinched at the word real, and Kara wondered if she should have said something else, but to her they simply weren’t real, and they never would be.

“Will the other ones fade away?” Cat asked, and J’onn could only lift his shoulders in a shrug.

“We’re not entirely sure. Perhaps, over time, but it’s impossible to say for certain.”

“Okay.” Cat set her jaw and nodded, and Kara watched as J’onn stepped close, watched as Cat’s eyes widened, watched as she turned to look at Kara like she was seeing her for the first time and knew that it had been successful, and reached out to steady Cat when she swayed. “Don’t.”

She wrenched her arm out of Kara’s grip, and Kara tried not to flinch.

“Oh, god, this can’t be happening.” Cat pressed her fingers into her eyes, like she could push it all away. “This can’t… this is _impossible_.” She paced, and Kara gave her space, knowing she needed to work through the thoughts swirling around her head. “I… I _loved_ you.” She said it like an accusation, and Kara gulped. “None of it was real?”

“I’m sorry.” She was, too, because now she couldn’t help but wonder if this could have been her reality, if only she’d been a little braver and told Cat how she really felt.

“Oh, Kara, you don’t need to be sorry.” Cat sounded so defeated that it broke Kara’s heart. “You must feel so… so _violated_.” Cat’s defeat turned into disgust, and Kara shook her head, stepping close toward Cat without even thinking, wanting to comfort her, but Cat held up a hand that stopped Kara in her tracks.

“I don’t. You didn’t do anything wrong, Cat.”

“I always knew it was too good to be true,” she whispered, so quietly that Kara struggled to hear it. “I always knew it would come crashing to an end, I just never imagined it would be like this.”

Kara had never seen such anguish on Cat’s face before, and it nearly broke her, nearly had her crumbling to her knees because it was _her_ fault, and she might not have seen Cat in years but in that moment, watching her fall apart, it felt like no time had passed at all, felt like she still had a hopeless crush on her boss, like she’d do anything to be able to hold her close and never let her go.

“Cat, I - ”

“Moms?” The voice came from behind her, and Kara had been so distracted by Cat that she hadn’t even heard the front door opening, hadn’t noticed a fourth person enter the room, and when she whirled around a boy with a mop of blonde curls was standing in the doorway, a backpack slung over one of his shoulders.

“Carter?” Kara asked, because even though she hadn’t seen him in years, he still looked like the cheeky teenager that she had so unsuccessfully managed to babysit all that time ago. He was much taller, almost the same height as J’onn, who was still hovering nearby and looking extremely uncomfortable, his cheekbones razor-sharp and his hazel eyes narrowing as he laid eyes on his mother and her very obvious distress.

“Mom, what’s wrong?” He wasn’t looking at Cat when he said it, was looking at Kara, instead, and oh, god, she hadn’t even thought of Carter, hadn’t even considered that he would be a part of this, too, and he was looking at her for support and he was calling her _Mom_ and it wasn’t just Cat’s life she was going to rip apart today, it was his, too.

They’d been a _family_ , and after today, they were going to be strangers.

“J’onn.” Kara’s voice was choked with the tears that threatened to spill from her eyes, completely overwhelmed by the sight of Carter, of her _son_ , and she felt her stomach roil and prayed she wasn’t about to be sick. “J’onn, can you please - ”

“I’ll sort it,” he assured her, patting her on the back before he threw his arm around Carter’s shoulders and led him from the room. “Come on, buddy,” he said, voice fading as they walked away. “I have a few things to explain to you.”

The room felt too quiet, too empty, when they’d gone, the silence pressing close and Kara felt like she was suffocating under the invisible weight of it. Cat collapsed onto the couch with a heavy sigh, and Kara hovered awkwardly in-front of her, with no idea what to say.

“I’ll, um, I’ll take some of my things with me, go and stay with my sister for a while. Give you and Carter some space.” Alex had confirmed that Kara had sold her apartment when she’d moved in with Cat – a whole eighteen months ago, and her relationship with Cat was, sadly, by far the longest that Kara had ever had, and she didn’t even _remember_ it.

“Okay,” Cat nodded. “That’s probably for the best. God, this must be so weird for you.” She’d had her head in her hands, but when she said that she looked up, meeting Kara’s gaze for the first time in a long while, and the pain in her eyes took Kara’s breath away. “To you we last spoke, what, two, three years ago?”

“After the Daxamites tried to invade,” Kara nodded, and Rao, that felt like it was aeons ago. “Wait, did that still happen?” She had no idea how much this alternate timeline had changed. “Did Mon-El even land here?”

“That unpleasant boy with the huge crush on you?” Cat’s lips curled into a sneer, and Kara would have very much liked to see the two of them interact. “Yes.”

“Kinda wish I could erase that part of the timeline from my memory,” Kara muttered, because dating him hadn’t exactly been her finest hour.

“You were together?”

“Unfortunately.” Kara would really rather not relive that experience. “If only I’d have known there was a much better option out there.” It was a joke, her voice light, but Cat didn’t smile.

“Oh, Kara, I was always an option.” Cat’s voice was soft and so very sad. “Why do you think I wanted to leave? Part of it was because I was growing restless, it’s true, but the thought of that job without you be my side every day? It was unbearable.”

“I didn’t… I didn’t know you felt that way.”

“How could I not?” Cat’s expression was earnest, and Kara’s heart beat double-time in her chest. “Ever since you walked into my office for the first time I knew there was something remarkable about you. I tried to keep you at arm’s length so you never knew how I felt, but it didn’t diminish it. Nothing did.”

Once upon a time, Kara would have killed to hear those words from Cat. She’d used to dream of it, of late nights in the office pouring over layouts, of Cat drawing her close and kissing her senseless but it had always been impossible, unattainable, because she was merely Kara Danvers, and Cat was the queen of all media.

There had been a lot of surprises since Kara had woken up this morning, but she thought that this was the biggest one of all, because the idea that Cat, in Kara’s reality, had always felt this way? The idea that they could have had something, if Kara had been just a little braver?

It was surprising and absolutely gut-wrenching, all at the same time.

She had to bite her tongue so that she didn’t say that she’d used to feel the same, because it would be cruel, in the face of everything that had happened. It had been years and Kara’s feelings had faded (by necessity – she’d have been obsessing over Cat’s every move in Washington, if she hadn’t gotten over it, and it hadn’t been easy, but when it came to Cat, nothing ever was), whilst Cat’s were stronger than ever.

Cat loved her, was in love with her, because even though her memories had been restored, Kara knew the alternative timeline wouldn’t be so easy to forget. For Cat, this was a break-up, and Kara wasn’t about to muddy the waters, not when she could see how much pain the other woman was in.

Behind her, a door opened, Carter and J’onn re-entering the room, and Kara only needed to take one glance at Carter to know that his memories had been restored, too, because he was looking at her with the same expression Cat had just a few moments ago.

“I, um, I should go.” Kara’s discomfort returned full-force with Carter standing in-front of her, and she had no idea what she could possibly say to him after dropping a bombshell that would destroy the life he knew.

“I think that would be for the best,” Cat replied, leaning into Carter’s side when he sat beside her on the couch and wrapped an arm around her shoulder. “Take whatever you need.” She waved toward the bedroom, and Kara had to force herself to move.

Being in there felt wrong, on a subatomic level, every cell in her body on edge. This was the room where she and Cat had spent so much time together, where they had grown closer, where they’d _slept_ together, and Kara tried not to look around as she shoved some of her belongings into her bag.

She was out of there in record time, found Cat struggling to hold back tears, her self-control fracturing as Carter hugged her, and the image of the two of them desperately trying to hold themselves together was imprinted on Kara’s mind long after she’d walked away.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The response to the last chapter absolutely blew me away - I love you guys! And a special shoutout to those of you that are reading this despite not having watched Supergirl in years and none of the crossover episodes - hopefully it isn't too hard for you to follow. 
> 
> Hope a glance into Cat's POV isn't tooooo painful for you all!

“Mom, you need to eat something.” Carter had his best no-nonsense voice on, and when Cat shook her head he forcefully placed a steaming bowl of pasta down on the coffee table in-front of her. “Please?”

She’d always had a hard time saying no to those pleading eyes, and they had the same effect now, when he was sixteen years old, as they had when he was a toddler, and she reluctantly reached out to take the fork he was waving in her face from him, grimacing as she speared a piece of penne.

The last thing she wanted was to eat, the pasta tasting like rubber, but she forced herself to chew and swallow and repeat to satisfy her son, hoping to ease some of the worry that lined his face.

He was too young to have frown lines, she scolded herself, too young to be having to shoulder the weight of this burden that had been dropped upon them, too young to have to watch his mother fall apart.

Last night, she’d gone to sleep with the love of her life in her arms, and now… now nothing made sense anymore.

She wondered if it ever would again.

Cat had always been an overthinker, agonising over every decision, haunted by her doubts and insecurities, but none of that had prepared her for the war that had been raging inside her head ever since J’onn and Kara had walked into her apartment and turned her life upside down.

Two alternate (and remarkably different) timelines forged their way through her mind, and it was a struggle for Cat to remember what had happened and what hadn’t. The real memories were clearer, the fake ones a little fuzzy around the edges, but that didn’t mean that Cat couldn’t remember with perfect clarity what it felt like to hold Kara in her arms, the taste of her lips, the way she said Cat’s name when she came.

_God_ , Cat needed to stop _thinking_ , before she started to drown in the echoes of a past that had never been real. Already she felt adrift from reality, untethered, her world off-kilter, no longer spinning on its axis, and she knew it would be oh so easy for her to fall off the edge completely.

She’d always known that Kara Danvers was her weakness (Cat had never been the same, since 10:15 on that day when Kara had walked into her office for the first time). Cat had been right, to keep her at arm’s length, to never let the girl know just how much she meant to her. Cat had done everything right – she’d but space between them when she’d felt them starting to grow closer, leaving behind her company and her city to forge a career elsewhere – but it had still backfired on her in the end, because now Kara knew much more than Cat had ever wanted her to.

She knew that Cat loved her (that Cat had _always_ loved her), a feeling that hadn’t faded when she’d been so rudely awakened from her alternate timeline, and one that Cat doubted ever would. She’d loved Kara before she knew what it was like to fall asleep beside her every night and wake up with her in her arms every morning, and she ached with the desire to feel that again, even though she knew she never would.

Kara had a whole different life, one that Cat hadn’t been a part of in so long – they were strangers, now, not lovers, especially when Kara shared none of the same memories as Cat about their time together.

It was insanity, how one simple moment (Kara kissing her that night she’d come to say goodbye, the diverging moment between the timelines in Cat’s mind) could have changed so much between them. A butterfly flapped its wings, and sent a hurricane careening into Cat’s life, leaving nothing but destruction in its wake.

“Can you help me with my English homework?” Carter asked, snapping Cat out of her spiralling thoughts – which was exactly what he wanted, because Cat knew for a fact that he didn’t need any help with any of his schoolwork. He was a model student, much to her pride, excelling in all of his classes, and she knew that he would go far in whatever field he chose to pursue as he grew older.

“Of course I will, sweetheart.” She chose to humour him, because she could probably do with the distraction. “What do you need?”

He plonked himself down next to her with his laptop balanced on his knee. “Okay, so I have to write an essay about the _Great Gatsby_ …”

Cat let herself focus on her son, pushing everything else away. It wasn’t easy, but years of running CatCo through multiple divorces and various other emotional upheavals had given her plenty of practice, and she was so grateful for him, her perfect, beautiful boy.

Their relationship had become strained, in the months after Cat had moved them to D.C. He didn’t do well with change, and it had been quite the adjustment, flying across the country to a new city and immersing him in a very different lifestyle.

She wondered if he was happy that they were now back in National City. Cat might know that she wasn’t supposed to be here, that she was still supposed to be writing speeches and keeping presidents in line, but nobody else did, and that meant that they were going to have to stay here, and pretend to live the lives that had been created for them.

For Carter, that meant little difference – he was just studying at another school – but for Cat, it was a big change. She was still the CEO of CatCo, though she had little to do with the day-to-day running of the company anymore, learning to delegate as she’d chosen to dedicate more of her time to her family. Her main role now was in the charity sector, setting up and running various non-profits for causes close to her heart.

She supposed this was her chance for another reset.

It might be good for her to get out of National City once more, to leave behind the essence of Kara that was so embedded in this apartment and in Cat’s life here, but she was loathe to uproot Carter once again, especially when he was settled and only had two years of school remaining.

Once Carter’s homework was done, she shooed him away to go and play some of his beloved videogames before he went to bed, not wanting him to spend his evening throwing her furtive glances when he thought she wouldn’t notice.

“I’ll be okay, sweetheart,” she assured him when he hesitated in the doorway. “I’ll come and say goodnight in a bit.”

“I love you, Mom.”

“I love you, too.”

Once his bedroom door had shut behind him, Cat took a deep breath before doing something she hadn’t done in a long time – she retired to her study with a bottle of scotch, and tried to chase away all thoughts of Kara Danvers.

It was futile, of course (Cat should have known that, really, from the many unsuccessful attempts that had preceded that night). Cat closed her eyes and all she could see was Kara’s face, that sunny smile and those dazzling eyes, mocking her for ever believing that they could have something real together.

There was a photo on Cat’s desk, of her, Carter and Kara, the three of them grinning at the camera, taken on a family vacation the previous summer. Cat barely recognised herself, the happiness that radiated off of her, completely at ease with her arms around the other woman.

And she _had_ been the happiest she’d ever been, even if it had all just been some grand fantasy. Cat had been married before but what she’d felt with her previous relationships paled in comparison to what she and Kara had had, and Cat should have known all along that it was too good to be true, that Kara could ever fall for her.

The scotch burned the back of her throat, but it did little to ease the ache in her heart. She wished that J’onn could have erased her memories completely, replaced all of the fakes with reality, because then at least she wouldn’t be wishing for something that she’d never truly had, wouldn’t feel like there was a part of her missing, like her soul had fractured and scattered in the wind.

She wished she had someone she could talk to about all of this, someone who could possibly understand, but she didn’t think there was another person alive who ever could. Carter could, a little – he’d lost his other mother, after all – but that was different to losing a girlfriend (an almost-fiancé, Cat thought, remembering the ring that was buried at the back of her underwear drawer with a pang in her heart), to losing the love of her life.

It was a unique position that Cat didn’t want to be in, and she wished that J’onn and Kara had just left her blissfully unaware.

Not that that would have been fair to Kara, Cat supposed, having to either pretend to play happy families when she was probably repulsed (Cat remembered the look of horror on Kara’s face as she’d scrambled away that morning, couldn’t imagine how she’d felt, waking up naked beside her former boss with no idea how she’d gotten there) or break things off for seemingly no apparent reason.

Cat couldn’t help but wonder why this had happened, why was it these events that had changed, that had brought her and Kara together? One change, as far as Cat was aware, that had had such far-reaching ramifications, but in reality, she and Kara had been apart for years – why was she now such an important part of her life? What had caused Cat to be transported from Washington back to National City, led Kara to wake up in bed beside her?

Cat wondered whether she’d ever get an answer to that question, or if it would just slowly drive her insane.

She hadn’t done any work, and she knew she wasn’t going to, either. Instead, she went in search of Carter, and when he waved his spare controller at her after she knocked on his bedroom door, she took it, even though she was always terrible at his games, and settled herself beside him on his bed.

“How are you feeling?” She asked him, quietly, after he’d beaten her at Mario Kart five times over. “About everything?” She should have asked him sooner, but she’d barely been able to process it herself, never mind talk to her son about it.

“I dunno.” He lifted his shoulders in a shrug before running a hand through his hair, some unruly curls falling into his eyes – it was time she took him to get it cut. “It’s weird. Like… like I’ve been living two lives. And I know which one is real, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t _feel_ real, you know?”

“I do.”

“Is it weird that I miss her?” He asked, looking up at Cat through his eyelashes. “Even though I never really knew her?”

“Not at all. I miss her, too.” It was such an odd sensation, to miss something that had never been there.

Cat had gotten over Kara years ago, and now she was faced with the prospect of having to do it all over again. And last time hadn’t been easy – she wished that it could have been as easy as out of sight, out of mind, when she’d left National City to ‘dive’, but that wasn’t the case.

In reality, she’d spent weeks travelling parts of the world she’d never seen, trying to ease the ache in her heart and the emptiness in her chest at leaving behind her company, her life for the last few years, and the assistant with the brilliant blue eyes and irresistible smile. She was just starting to get there, thinking of returning to her home when her plane had fallen from the sky and Supergirl (Kara, she’d always known it was Kara) had caught her, and Cat had slipped under her spell once more.

Leaving the second time had been easier, but it had still taken months before she could resist the urge to google Supergirl or, more often, as she published more and more articles, Kara Danvers. Even after three years, sometimes she still slipped, and her pride when she’d found out that Kara had won a Pulitzer had been overwhelming, as was the worry whenever Supergirl was facing a particularly nasty foe.

(Okay, so maybe she’d never really, truly gotten over it, and now, when she could still remember so clearly what it felt like to have Kara in her arms, maybe it was impossible to achieve).

“Are you going to be okay, Mom?” Carter asked her, looking at her through worried eyes.

“I… honestly Carter, I don’t know.” She’d always promised him she’d never lie to him, not about the important things, and she had little desire to change that now. “I think I just need a little time to adjust.”

“We can leave, you know,” he said, leaning his head on her shoulder. “I know – I’ve only got a couple of years left in school,” he spoke quickly when Cat opened her mouth, guessing what she was going to say, “but I think I’d be okay moving to another one. We could go back to D.C.”

“You _hated_ D.C.,” Cat pointed out, tapping him on the end of his nose. “In fact, if I recall correctly, you were so against the idea of moving that you went to live with your father for four months.”

That hadn’t been a pleasant period for either of them – Carter had hated living there, and blamed Cat, while Cat, halfway around the country from her son, had felt like she was falling apart without him, had been close to handing in her resignation and retreating back to the west coast.

“That was really dumb of me,” he said, wrinkling his nose at the memory. “I came around, though, and D.C. wasn’t _too_ bad.”

“Can I have that in writing?” Cat teased, and Carter nudged her in the side with his elbow. “I think I’d like to stay here, though.” She glanced out of the window in Carter’s room, admiring the skyline of the city she’d always loved, ever since a visit with her father when she was just a girl.

“Okay, but if you change your mind, that’s okay,” he replied, completely earnest, and Cat’s heart melted, because he was sixteen, and the hormones had well and truly settled in, but he was still her sweet baby boy, and she loved that they hadn’t grown apart as he’d grown up. “Or if you want to go and stay out of town for a while, we could. Or _you_ could, and I could stay here.” There was a flicker of mischief in his eyes, and it was Cat’s turn to elbow him.

“Oh yeah? Is that so you can invite that cute girl from your math class over here when I won’t be around to pry?”

“ _No_.” His cheeks flamed, and Cat grinned.

“You sure you’ll be alright, going back to school? Adjusting to everything?”

“I think so,” he nodded, but Cat wondered if he’d really thought it all through – he still had his old memories, but would his new ones, his real ones, affect how he interacted with his friends, with his classes? “If not, I’ll come and talk to you.”

“Alright, sweetheart.” Cat glanced at the clock and realised that it was well past his bedtime. “Right, young man, I think it’s time for you to be getting some sleep.”

He made a face, but did as he was told, trudging into the bathroom to brush his teeth after giving his mother a quick hug goodnight.

Cat slipped away and down the hall, but when she got to her bedroom and looked at her bed, she couldn’t quite face it, not yet.

She returned to her study, reviving her earlier attempts at work. She had a gala to organise to raise funds for her latest non-profit, focusing on offering support to homeless LGBT teens. While she’d hated those kind of events when she’d been running CatCo, she found that she enjoyed them more when she was designing them herself, and the schmoozing had certainly been more bearable with Kara by her side.

Now, she wouldn’t have that support, but at least throwing herself into the planning process would keep her mind away from the woman in question.

By the time her eyes were starting to droop closed, Cat had selected a venue, queried caterers, and come up with a potential guest list that her assistant could whittle down in the morning. Satisfied, she closed the lid of her laptop whilst smothering a yawn, before she tiptoed back to her room, not wanting to make too much noise and wake up her son when he had to be up early for school.

She had to be up early, too, but she had never been someone who needed eight hours of sleep to function – she could get by on as little as two, as long as she had a hefty supply of coffee at the ready – so she wasn’t too worried when she finally slipped beneath the covers at three a.m.

The sheets were cold against the bare skin of her legs, and Cat refused to allow herself to think about how nice it would be to have a warm body to curl up beside. The sheets still smelled like Kara, and, as she turned her back to Kara’s side of the bed (trying not to imagine her lying there, in the muted darkness, breathing even and her face relaxed in sleep) Cat vowed to change them in the morning.

Maybe if she did that, then she wouldn’t still see Kara whenever she closed her eyes.

It took her ages to fall asleep, after tossing and turning, and when she eventually did, she was haunted by a pair of blue, blue eyes.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the longer wait between chapters - the past two weeks have been craaaaaazy. This is the last chapter that's crisis-heavy in terms of plot - from here on out we will be focusing more on our girls finding their way back to one another. 
> 
> Hope this was worth the wait!

Kara might be an alien who wasn’t afflicted with human weakness such as sore and aching muscles after spending several nights sleeping on a lumpy couch, but that didn’t mean that she couldn’t feel _discomfort,_ and she became increasingly grumpy as the days wore on, a fact that didn’t go unnoticed by her new roommate.

“Are, um, are you okay Kara?” Alex asked, eyeing her sister with no small level of concern as she stabbed so viciously at a potsticker with her chopsticks that she put a hole clean through the plastic container.

“I’m fine.”

It was clearly a lie, and Alex shot her a look of disbelief as Kara set the container back on Alex’s coffee table, half-finished.

She didn’t remember the last time she’d felt fine, not really – certainly not since she’d woken up to this nightmare world, where Lex Luthor ruled the DEO and the entire city worshipping him, where not even CatCo was her safe haven because she was terrified of running into Cat.

Even before then, she was stuck in the vanishing point, and before _that_ she’d watched her whole world be torn apart by anti-matter, and then there was the fight with Lena, and everything else, and Kara was usually so _positive_ but she was finding it increasingly hard to be in the face of her new reality.

Some paragon of hope she was.

“I’m going to go do a couple of circuits of the city,” Kara decided, suddenly desperate to get out of the apartment, away from the heavy weight of her sister’s gaze. “I’ll stay out for a while, give you and Kelly a chance to spend some time together.”

“You don’t have to - ”

“It’s fine,” Kara brushed Alex off as she reached out to stop her. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

Alex watched her go, and Kara felt bad, knowing that she was worrying her sister, but she didn’t know how to pretend to be okay when she felt like everything was falling apart.

Circling the city was, in truth, unnecessary – it had been quiet, since crisis, _boring_ , almost, and Kara wondered if it made her a bad person for wishing that something, _anything_ , would happen, be it the sudden appearance of a new villain or a simple robbery.

But neither her superhearing nor her x-ray vision detected anything out of place, and Kara sighed, unwilling to return to her sister’s apartment for a couple more hours. Without thinking, she found herself hovering close to Cat’s apartment ( _their_ apartment, technically, and that was still too weird for her to think about too much), and it was a struggle not to look through the walls, to see what Cat was doing within.

(She’d used to do that, sometimes, back when Cat had still living in National City, if Kara knew it had been a particularly trying day, or on those rare weekends that Carter spent with his father and Cat had been alone, just to check that she was okay, and she supposed that old habits really did die hard).

She was quick to move away, not wanting to cross a boundary that it would be difficult to come back from, even though she ached to know how Cat was doing. How was she coping, with her memories restored? Did she wish that they hadn’t been? Was she already plotting her escape from National City, ready to flee back to the east coast? Was she thinking of Kara, the way that Kara couldn’t seem to stop thinking about her?

Those were the questions that kept Kara up at night, another reason for her constant grumpiness, and she often dreamed of Cat, unable to forget how it felt, to wake up beside her, the image of Cat, bathed in the morning sunlight, imprinted on her mind forevermore.

Desperate for a distraction, Kara found herself moving further afield, away from National City, flying flat-out, the wind whipping through her hair as she hurtled through the night sky. She didn’t have a particular destination in mind, content to just enjoy pushing herself further and further, but when she recognised Star City’s lights twinkling in the distance she slowed down, and grinned when she spotted a familiar flash of lightning speeding through the streets below.

“Hey, stranger,” Kara said as she swooped down to fly beside Barry, easily matching him for speed. “Who you chasing?”

“No-one.” Barry skidded to a stop, and Kara landed lightly on her feet beside him. “Just blowing off some steam. What brings you to town?” He looked on high alert, and Kara didn’t really blame him – usually, when they were together, the world was about to end.

“Nothing,” Kara shrugs. “I just… started flying, and this was where I ended up.”

“Are you having trouble sleeping, too?”

“Yeah.” There weren’t many people that understood just what Kara had been through, and, while there were a lot of things that Kara despised about this new world, she _was_ glad that she, Barry and the others no longer had a multiverse separating them. “How come you’re here, and not in Central City?”

“I keep looking for Oliver,” Barry said, his voice quiet and his eyes haunted, and Kara reached out to give his shoulder a gentle squeeze.

“Still no sign of him?”

“No.” Barry shook his head, and Kara wondered if he’d ever truly give up searching for his fallen friend. “I keep hoping we’ll find something, some sign that he’s still out there, somewhere, but…” He trailed off with a sigh. “I’m not supposed to be here.” He said it so quietly that even Kara struggled to hear him. “I was supposed to vanish, but because of him, I get to spend longer with my wife and my friends, my future daughter, but it… it doesn’t seem fair that he had to give all of that up. This new world, it’s… I have so much to be grateful for, but I can’t stop feeling guilty.”

“You shouldn’t.” Kara’s voice was soft, because she knew that Oliver had made that sacrifice not just for Barry but for her, too, and _she_ felt guilty because she _wasn’t_ overly grateful. “Knowing Oliver, he wouldn’t want you to torture yourself over this. He’d want you to carry on without him. Make him proud. _Enjoy_ yourself.”

“I know.” Barry managed a small smile. “I was just about to stop by Arrow HQ, if you want to join me?”

She was in no rush to return to National City and her sister’s lumpy couch, so she agreed.

“Race you!” She cried, before shooting into the air, and she laughed as she heard Barry curse before scrambling to catch up.

She won, narrowly, already leaning against the door of the building before Barry arrived, glaring as he stopped in-front of her.

“You _cheated_.”

“You’re such a sore loser.”

Barry was still grumbling under his breath when they walked into what Kara had affectionately named the Arrowcave, and she was surprised to find that there was already someone inside it – Sara Lance was sitting in-front of a row of computer screens, a beer in her hand and her legs kicked up onto the desk she was positioned behind.

“Hey, Danvers!” Sara grinned when she spotted them, getting to her feet and pulling Kara into a warm hug. “What brings you here?”

“Just dropping by,” she shrugged, settling herself down into the chair beside Sara’s. “I thought you’d have gone back to the Waverider by now.”

“I figured I’d stick around for a few more days.” Sara sat back down and took a sip of her beer. “See what’s changed around these parts since the big ol’ reset.”

“What, um, what _has_ changed?” Kara couldn’t help but ask, because Sara had given her an easy opportunity, and she wanted to know if anything weird had happened to any of the other paragons since they’d woken up on this earth. “Anything… strange?”

“Like what?” Barry joined them, pulling up a chair with a frown. “Do you need help with something in National City?”

“No, nothing like that, I just…” She trailed off, biting at her bottom lip. “Like, when you woke up, was there anything really different than before? Bad different?”

“Apart from running into you downtown, you mean?” Barry asked, with a grin that quickly faded once he saw the look on Kara’s face. “No, nothing _bad_. As for different… well, my parents are alive now.” He said that quietly, like if he said it too loud it would change, and they would be ripped away. “I don’t know how it’s possible, and I still can’t quite believe it, but… they’re here, somehow.”

“So are my dad and my sister.” Sara picked at the edge of the label on her bottle, and Kara wondered if that was the real reason why she was sticking around – time with her family had been limited, while she was on the timeship, and now that she had them back, it must be hard for her to want to leave them again. “Do you think… when we reset the timeline, we used the book of Destiny, right?”

Sara’s words were speculative, and both Kara and Barry nodded, Kara wondering where she was going with this.

“What if, when we were all focusing using the book, it took into consideration the things that we desperately wanted? What if when we reset the timeline, it gave us a little something extra?”

It was certainly an intriguing line of thought, and it made sense for both Barry and Sara, in light of what they’d just told her. It made sense for Lex, too, because she could imagine him desiring a world where he was loved by all and had a tremendous amount of power to boot. She hadn’t spent enough time with J’onn to know if things were much different for him, after he’d disappeared to help restore the memories of their other friends, and she hadn’t spoken to Kate or Ryan since coming back, either.

But it didn’t make sense for _her_.

“Did you get anyone back?” Sara asked, looking towards Kara with curiosity. “Is that what’s weird?”

“No.” Kara shook her head, and sighed when she noticed both of the others looking at her, waiting for her to continue. “I… I woke up in bed with someone that, to me, I hadn’t seen in years. Except to them, we’d been in a relationship for three years and lived together.”

“Jesus,” Sara said, and Barry let out a low whistle. “That’s… a lot. Was it someone you used to date? Someone you were interested in?”

“No. I used to have a crush on them, but I always knew nothing was ever going to happen between us. We were worlds apart.” Not literally, but Kara hadn’t been naïve – Cat could have had anyone she wanted, so why would she have ever settled for her assistant?

(Except she had, a traitorous voice whispered in Kara’s head – she’d chosen Kara, in this other life, and from what Cat had said the other night, after getting her memories back, she would have chosen her in this life, too, if only one of them would have taken a chance, and been a little braver).

“You do know you’re a catch, right?” Sara told her, deadly serious. “Anyone would be lucky to have you.”

Kara isn’t so sure about that.

Between being a journalist and being Supergirl, she barely had any time for herself, let alone to devote to another person – not to mention the complications that came along with dating someone when she was a superhero in her spare time. How would they react to the news? To the thought of constantly being in danger, if they weren’t careful? To Supergirl’s enemies targeting them to get to her?

Kara’s only real relationship had been with Mon-El, and he’d been able to handle himself in a fight, at least. But to be with someone human? Someone so fragile and breakable, that even Kara would have to be constantly concentrating so that she didn’t accidentally hurt them?

She wanted to know how she’d been able to have that, with Cat, for so long. Had she ever lost control and left bruises that had taken days to heal? Had their relationship ever been discovered by someone with a sinister agenda? Had Cat or, god forbid, Cater ever been put in danger because of Kara?

Had Kara ever hurt someone, in desperation to get them back?

She hated that she didn’t know the answer to any of those questions, that Cat had all of these memories of her, had a _part_ of her, almost, that Kara herself didn’t even know, that she _wouldn’t_ ever know, and she didn’t know how she could ever look Cat in the eye when Cat knew her so intimately, all the parts of her that she tried so hard to shield from the world.

“I don’t even know what I’d do in that situation,” Barry said, snapping Kara out of her swirling thoughts.

“I jumped out of the window,” Kara admitted, sheepishly, and the others laughed. “I didn’t know what else to do! What would _you_ do if you woke up naked next to your former boss?”

“Wait, you’re talking about Cat?” Barry’s eyes widened, and Kara had almost forgotten that the two of them had met, when Barry had first ended up on her earth, cursing herself for letting a few too many details slip. “Seriously?”

“Cat who?” Sara asked, reaching for her phone. “I wanna see if she’s hot or not.”

“She’s _scary_ ,” Barry replied, no doubt remembering Cat’s disdain at Barry’s appearance in her building. “It’s Cat Grant, isn’t it?”

“Yes, but - ”

“Oh yeah, she _is_ hot,” Sara cut her off, grinning. “And there’s a whole lot of articles about the two of you. You seem to be quite the power couple on this earth.”

“What? Let me see.” Kara grabbed the phone when Sara made no move to hand it to her, and she didn’t even bother to dodge out of the way of Sara’s blow of retaliation, a smack to Kara’s arm that made the other woman wince.

“ _Ouch_ , I forgot that you were made out of steel.” Sara winced as she rubbed at the back of her hand, but Kara was too busy staring down at Sara’s phone to reply.

It was open on a picture of her and Cat at some gala event in the city, apparently taken just a few weeks ago. Cat looked radiant in a crimson dress that hugged all of her curves, but it was her own face that Kara was transfixed by, because she looked so _happy_ , her eyes full of it as she smiled down at Cat, their hands clasped as they posed for the cameras, and Kara didn’t think she’d ever seen that expression on her own face, that unbridled joy, and she had to tear her gaze away and shove the phone back at Sara before she started to cry.

“Why is this happening to me?” She whispered, voice more pained than she expected. “You guys have a second chance with the people that you loved but I… I feel like I’m being tortured.”

“Are you…” Sara trailed off, looking at Kara warily, “are you sure that this isn’t maybe a second chance with someone that _you_ love, too? Was it really just a harmless crush on your boss, or was it always something more?”

Kara didn’t want to answer that question.

It brought back too much confusion, too much pain. Thinking back to those endless hours spent by Cat’s side, anticipating her every need, and soon it hadn’t just been a job – it became something much more than that. It had been making sure Cat’s day started off right, with a steaming hot latte, because that made everything that came after it just a little more bearable. It had been bringing her food and making sure she was eating when she was so absorbed in her work that she would forget, it had been screening her calls to make sure that her mother never got through to ruin her day, and ensuring that there was an extra project or two for Cat to focus on when Carter had been away for the weekend.

Somewhere along the way, it hadn’t become important to Kara that Cat had a good, easy day because it made life easier for her – it had become important because she wanted Cat to be _happy_ , because Cat’s happiness had meant the world to her.

Kara had convinced herself that the way she felt about James was stronger, but it had just been easier than admitting how she really felt, who she really wished she could go home with every night, and it was no wonder that it had fizzled out almost as quickly as it had begun.

She’d tried hard with Mon-El ( _too_ hard, to force something that simply wasn’t there), but that hadn’t worked out, either, and had being with him ever given her a rush like the way she’d felt when she’d first heard Cat say her name?

Kara had pushed those memories down so far, deep, deep down, when Cat had left, because it was too painful for her to dwell on, but now she wondered if she’d pushed other things down, too. Like the way she’d felt when they were together on those long nights where neither of them had wanted to go home, sitting close on Cat’s white leather couch, Kara drowning in the scent of Cat’s perfume, her heart beating loud in her ears when Cat’s leg had accidentally brushed against her own.

Like how she’d felt the first time Cat had hugged her, when Kara had wished she’d never let her go.

“Oh, Rao,” she whispered, more to herself than anyone else, because oh, _oh_ , maybe it hadn’t been just a crush, after all – maybe it had been so much more, but Kara had been in such a state of denial that she’d never even realised.

“Is that Kryptonian for fuck?” Sara asked Barry, her voice low.

“Maybe?” He replied, and Kara was too busy spiralling to bother to correct them. “Kara, are you okay?”

“Y-yeah,” she lied. “I just need to get some air. Does this place have roof access?”

Barry nodded and pointed towards a different door than the one they’d come through, and when Kara pressed it open she found herself at the base of a staircase. The door at the top opened onto the roof, and she took a deep breath of the city air as she closed it behind her and stepped close to the building’s edge.

Something about being in the open air, looking out at the city lights, had always had a calming effect on her. It was probably left over from her days as a teenager with the Danvers, when she and Alex had been forbidden from flying, so instead had crawled out onto the roof of their house so that they could still look up at the stars.

It wasn’t as fun as flying, but it had still brought her comfort, and whenever she was feeling overwhelmed, standing in the open and staring up at the sky always seemed to help. Even with her superior vision, it was hard for her to make out any of the constellations in the glare of the bright lights, but if she squinted, she was pretty sure she could see Krypton, still shining in the sky despite its demise.

While coming here hadn’t initially been part of her plan when she’d fled her sister’s apartment, when she’d spotted Barry, Kara had thought that maybe she’d get some clarity over everything that had happened to them, be able to have someone to share her confusion and her worries and fears, but now she just felt _worse_.

The possibility that this new earth was partly a result of the true desires of its paragons seemed ludicrous, but Kara was finding it hard to ignore the signs. She just didn’t know what that meant, moving forward – if this was truly supposed to be a second chance, _her_ second chance at having Cat in her life, at maybe having something _with_ Cat, was she brave enough to take it this time, or had too much changed in the few years since they’d last spoken?

Kara wasn’t sure, but then, she wasn’t sure of much these days.

She spent a few more minutes on the roof, trying to clear her mind, before she made her way back down the stairs. She found Sara doing push-ups in the centre of the training ring, and Barry nowhere in sight.

“He left to go pick up some takeout,” Sara said when she noticed Kara looking around. “That boy needs to consume a million calories a day. Want to spar?”

“I don’t think you could handle me,” Kara replied, honestly, because if she ever sparred with her sister at the DEO they always dampened her powers, and she didn’t want to accidentally hurt her friend.

“Let me try?” Sara suggested, eyes glinting at the thought of a challenge.

“As long as you know what you’re getting yourself into,” Kara warned her, watching Sara closely as she grinned and stepped close, holding her arms out in-front of her.

She was _fast_ , and Kara had to really concentrate to dodge out of the way of her blows. It was hard not to admire the fluidity with which she moved, more agile than most foes Kara had fought over the past few years, and she could probably learn a few things from the other woman if Sara was willing to teach her.

They were still twisting around one another when Barry re-appeared, laden with bags of food, and when Kara caught a whiff of potstickers, her earlier loss of appetite was suddenly restored, and she spun quickly and dragged Sara’s legs out from underneath her, settling a gentle knee on the centre of her back to stop her from scrambling back to her feet.

“Were you just letting me think I could win?” Sara asked as Kara offered her an arm to haul her back to her feet.

“Kinda?” Kara said, a little sheepish. “But you _were_ holding your own. If you we ever did that when I didn’t have my powers, you’d kick my ass.”

That seemed to placate Sara, and Kara flashed Barry a grateful smile as he tossed her a container of chow mein.

“You should drop by more often,” Barry said, once the three of them had polished off all of the food. “We should take advantage of our new-found proximity.”

“I will,” Kara vowed, because she’d had fun, tonight, when she hadn’t been looking for it, and it was nice to spend time with other people who understood exactly what she was going through.

“I’ll try to, as well,” Sara added. “And if you guys ever fancy going on a jaunt through time, call me.” She stretched her hands over her head before smothering a yawn. “I think it’s time for me to call it a night,” she decided, and Kara glanced at her phone, her eyes widening when she realised the time. “I’ll see you guys again soon?”

“Yeah, it was nice to see you again.” Kara pulled her into a hug. “I should probably be getting back, too. I have work in the morning.”

“Such is the glamorous life of a superhero,” Barry said with a smile. “Don’t be a stranger, okay?”

“I won’t,” she promised, and it was one she intended to keep. As they went their separate ways, Kara felt lighter, speeding through the sky and back towards her home, than she had in days.

She still wasn’t sure what she was feeling – her head and her heart were both a mess, but it had been nice, to talk about it with the others, in a way she hadn’t allowed herself with anyone else. Even with Alex, she’d been guarded, and she knew it was putting a strain on their relationship, but Alex was someone else who had memories of both lives, who had seen a different part of her, who was too close to her situation with Cat for Kara to even know where to begin explaining herself.

She ached to see Cat, but she knew that was selfish. She’d vowed to keep her distance, but in light of what she’d learned that night, it was becoming harder and harder to remember why it was a terrible idea, why she couldn’t just fly to their penthouse apartment and tap on the glass.

It wouldn’t be fair, though, not when Kara was so uncertain about everything. Maybe Cat had meant more to her than Kara had been willing to realise, back then, but it had still been years, they were both different people, now, and it wouldn’t be right, to crash back into Cat’s life if she wasn’t sure what she wanted.

Could she even see herself being in a relationship with Cat?

She slowed down as she neared National City, hovering in the air just above the city limits, mulling it over. It had been so long since she’d let someone in, and it had ended so disastrously that she didn’t know if she was ready to try again.

There were things she did miss, though, like having someone to come home to at the end of the day, someone to curl up with at night. She missed the little things, the comfort from always having someone to turn to, and it would be nice to have that again.

And Cat had always been there for her, when she’d been both Kara and Supergirl, always willing to listen, to offer advice, to let Supergirl just… sit on her balcony and have a quiet moment to herself. People thought that Cat was prickly and uncaring, because that was the persona she projected to the world, but Kara new that it was just a façade, that beneath the surface, Cat cared more than anyone Kara had ever met.

It might have been years but Kara was sure that those aspects of Cat’s personality wouldn’t have changed, but _she_ had changed, wasn’t the same girl that Cat had used to know, and if Cat had, once upon a time, wanted to be with her, would she still feel the same way now?

Would she even want to try, after everything she’d been through?

Kara didn’t know, but she thought she might want to try and find out.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope everyone is managing to stay safe (and home!) in these crazy, crazy times. Hopefully this chapter manages to keep you entertained for at least a little while. 
> 
> And for those of you that don't already follow me on tumblr, I've been filling prompts on there for the last few days - I am ofendlesswonder on there, too, if you wanna check them out :)
> 
> Hope you enjoy!

Cat’s reduced duties at CatCo don’t spare her from board meetings, and it was odd, to be back sitting at the head of that glass table, when she thought she’d given it up long ago.

They were still incredibly boring, and Cat spent most of the hour staring out of the window, wishing she could sleep with her eyes open, because Harry’s droning voice was almost enough to lull her into the unconsciousness that was so elusive whenever Cat was lying in her bed.

Changing the sheets hadn’t helped, and neither had sleeping in the guest room, which Cat had tried in desperation one night, but she’d still laid awake, staring at the ceiling, her mind working on overdrive, and she’d returned back to her own bed the following night.

It made her cranky, though she tried not to show it when she was home, not wanting to worry Carter, but that just meant it manifested when she was at work, instead, and her assistant and her employees both at CatCo and her charities had been tiptoeing around her all week.

“Is um, is everything alright, Ms Grant?” Her assistant, Jenny, asked after the meeting was done and Cat was back in her office, sitting behind her desk, back in her throne, and rubbing at her temples. It was a question that Jenny had been desperate to ask for days, Cat knew, but she’d never quite been brave enough to force out the words – Cat suspected that her foul mood that morning might have been the tipping point, when she’d snapped at four different people and threatened to fire two more.

“Yes,” Cat replied, voice sharp. “Why?”

“I… it’s just… you’ve been…” Jenny trailed off under the weight of Cat’s glare, throat working as she swallowed, but she pushed through her fear to continue. “Is everything alright with Kara?”

The sound of her name took Cat’s breath away, and she tried not to flinch, because this wasn’t something that she’d thought about – the fact that, outside of the most important people in their lives, no-one else would know what had happened, and would assume that they were still together.

It was the first time she’d been asked about their relationship, and she had no idea how to answer. She couldn’t say that things were fine, because that would be easy to disprove, but she didn’t want to have to come up with a reason for them to have broken up, either.

She should have been more prepared, but it caught her off guard – she’d been so determined not to think about Kara at all (she failed, more often than not, especially at night when she was lying alone in her bed with no distractions to quiet her mind), that she hadn’t anticipated that other people would ask about her, would find out that they didn’t spend time together anymore.

“We’re… taking a break,” Cat decided to answer, after a moment of deliberation. “And that’s all I’d like to say on the matter.”

Cat’s voice held enough finality to have Jenny scurrying away, leaving Cat alone.

Her mood had already been sour but now it was worse, and after thirty minutes of staring at the cursor blinking on her computer screen, she pushed herself away from her desk with a low growl and stalked out to her balcony, itching for a drink.

She didn’t reach for the bottle of scotch sitting on her bar on the way out, though. She thought of Carter, of the look in his eyes whenever he’d seen her drinking the past few days, knew he worried she was falling back into her bad habits, and drinking at work was definitely crossing a line that there was probably no way back from.

Outside, she closed her eyes and rested her hands on the balcony railing, tilting her head so that she could feel the sun warming her skin. She’d missed this view, when she’d been in Washington, missed standing out here and surveying her kingdom, and it was hard for her to remember, as she opened her eyes to look out at the city spread before her, how she’d been able to leave.

It hadn’t been an easy decision to make.

She’d been thinking about it for a while, but Kara’s promotion had kicked her into action – she’d become stagnant, missed pushing boundaries, was ready for a change, wanted to feel that same drive to succeed that she’d felt when she’d built CatCo from the ground up.

When she thought back to the day she’d left, to her last night on this balcony, two conflicting memories swim in her head.

In one, she said ‘be safe, Supergirl’, and Kara flew away with a soft, sad smile, and Cat watched her go with a heavy feeling in her heart, trying to memorise the look on her face, the way her hair fluttered in the wind, the words ‘please, don’t go yet’ stuck in the back of her throat.

In the other, she said ‘be safe, Supergirl’, and instead of leaving, Kara had turned towards her and glanced down at her lips, biting down on her own, reluctant to leave.

_“I don’t want you to go,” Kara had said, and if Cat hadn’t already known that Kara was Supergirl, then she would have then, because the expression on her face had been the same one Kara had worn when she was sitting on the couch in Cat’s office, messing with a cushion and looking absolutely crushed when Cat told her she was leaving. “I’ll miss you.”_

_“I’ll miss you, too.” Cat’s voice had cracked, and she’d felt tears spring into her eyes, and Kara would never know_ just _how much Cat would miss her. “But you can use those handy superpowers of yours to come and visit me whenever you want.”_

_“How will I know where you are?”_

_“You can text me.”_

_“I don’t have your number.”_

_“Oh, I think we both know that you do.” Cat said it quietly, carefully, her eyes fixed on Kara’s face, and when she opened her mouth no doubt ready with her denials, Cat held up a hand. “Don’t.”_

_“Where will you go first?”_

_“I have no idea.” She hadn’t been lying when she said it was exhilarating, to not have a plan, to be able to go with the flow, even though it scared her, too. “Where would_ you _go?”_

_“I… I don’t know.” Kara looked surprised by the question, by the idea that she had some autonomy, that she wasn’t tied to this city just because she’d decided to be its protector. “I haven’t really travelled much.”_

_“Well, you’re still young, you have time.”_

_Silence fell between then, but it was comfortable, the only sound in the air that of the city far below. When Cat turned her head, Kara was looking back at her, and she looked so sad that Cat couldn’t help but step closer, cupping a hand around her cheek like she’d almost done earlier in her office, and ran her thumb across Kara’s cheek._

_“Don’t go,” Kara pleaded once more, eyes shiny with tears. “I don’t know how to be here without you.”_

_“You’ll be fine,” Cat insisted, fighting back her own tears, because she thought she’d already done the goodbye, and she wasn’t prepared for another. “You’ll have forgotten all about me in weeks’ time.”_

_“Never,” Kara breathed. “I could never forget about you.”_

_She stepped closer, then, impossibly closer, her hands settling on Cat’s hips, and then she was leaning down to kiss her. It was chaste, just testing the waters, but Cat didn’t want to let her go (couldn’t let her go), slid her fingers into Kara’s hair to pull her back down, and their next kiss was longer, deeper, left them both breathless and aching._

If Cat closed her eyes, she could remember the scent of Kara’s perfume, the taste of her lips, the feeling of her skin, soft beneath Cat’s fingertips.

That was the pivotal moment that had changed everything, and it was a moment that Cat didn’t think she’d ever forget.

Sighing, she pushed herself away from the balcony, and tried to banish thoughts of Kara from her mind as she returned to her office.

She didn’t manage to get any work done, though, because just as she’d settled back behind her desk, a story on one of her screens caught her attention – it was grainy footage of Supergirl, fighting downtown, and as Cat watched, Kara was sent hurtling into the ground by a foe almost three times her size.

She didn’t get back up.

Cat watched for what felt like an age, eyes fixed on the screen, watching as whoever was filming crept closer. She saw a crater, a cape lying in the centre of it, fluttering in the wind, before DEO agents, dressed all in black, swarmed the area, and the screen went black.

Cat turned to her computer, wanting to know how long it had been since the footage had been taken. It was only an hour old, and there had been no updates on Supergirl since, and that sent Cat into a spiral of panic, her heart beating double-time in her chest.

She tried to switch off her mind, tried to focus on her work, but it was futile – she and Kara might not truly know one another in this life, but that didn’t mean that Cat didn’t still care about her with a ferocity that took her breath away.

She told Jenny that she was working from home for the rest of the day, but it wasn’t her apartment that she instructed her driver to take her to, once she slipped into the backseat of the waiting car – it was the DEO building downtown.

No-one batted an eyelid when she walked into the lobby, and though Cat had _technically_ never been inside it before, she had memories of visiting Kara, walked a semi-familiar path through the building and towards the medical wing, praying that when she got there Kara would be okay.

She felt like a ghost, walking through the hallways, unnoticed and unchallenged by all who hurried past her, too focused on their own missions and problems, and it wasn’t until Cat stepped through the swinging double doors that led to the medbay that she saw someone she recognised.

Alex Danvers was standing outside an examination room, her face drawn and pale, and for one terrible moment, Cat thought that the worst had happened, but when she glanced through the window and saw Kara lying in a bed within, she noticed her chest rise and fall and breathed out a heavy sigh of relief.

Alex jumped at the noise, whirling around to face Cat with a hand pressed over her heart, and when she realised who was standing behind her, her expression shifted, and Cat wished she knew what the other woman was thinking.

Sisters might be too strong a word for what they’d been when she and Kara were together, but they had been _friends_ , and Alex had been the one Cat had turned to when she was thinking of proposing, they’d gone _ring_ shopping together, but now, standing in that hallway, they were strangers.

She knew that Alex must have also had her memories restored, and Cat wondered what she thought of it all, if she was disgusted by the idea of Cat and her sister being together, if she thought Cat should leave the city and never return.

“I… I know I have no right to be here,” Cat said, when Alex refused to break the heavy silence that had fallen between them, her voice quiet and uncertain, two things that she so rarely was. “But I… I saw it on the news, and I just wanted to know that she was okay.”

Alex stared at her for one long moment, like she wasn’t sure what to say, like she was trying to figure her out, and Cat would be impressed if she could, because she could barely figure it out herself sometimes.

“Well, she’s still breathing,” Alex replied eventually, her worried gaze turning back toward her sister. “But we’re not really sure how long it’ll be until she wakes up. The news footage only caught the end of the fight – it went on for a lot longer, and I think she blew out her powers as she fell.”

“She was human when she hit the ground?” Cat asked, because an impact like that… the injuries for someone without superhuman strength would be devastating.

“Pretty much,” Alex confirmed with a nod. “She has a few broken bones, but we’re hopeful that they’ll heal relatively quickly. She’s already starting to mend, but we don’t know how long it’ll be before she gets her powers back.”

“Director Danvers?” A DEO agent stuck his head around the door, an apologetic look on his face. “Sorry to bother you, but there’s been another incident.”

“Same guy?”

“Same guy,” he confirmed, and Alex’s mouth set in a hard line. “Do you want me to call reinforcements?”

“I’ll do it,” Alex replied. “I’ll be out in a moment.”

Cat watched as she transformed from worried sister to government agent, though she couldn’t help but throw one long look at Kara before she turned away, a pained look on her face.

“I’ll stay with her,” Cat said softly, noting Alex’s reluctance and not exactly in a hurry to leave Kara, either. “Until you get back.”

“Thank you.” Alex curled a hand around Cat’s shoulder before she turned and strode away, and Cat hovered in the hallway for a few moments before she decided that the chair at Kara’s bedside would probably be more comfortable.

Inside the room, the faint beeping of the machines Kara was hooked up to was the only sound. She looked peaceful, despite the bruises that littered her skin, her eyes closed and face relaxed, and Cat found herself watching the rise and fall of her chest, comforted by that and the beep of the heart monitor strapped to Kara’s chest.

She didn’t feel as out of place, curled up in a chair beside the fallen hero, as she thought she would. She had dozens of memories of nights like this, of rushing to the DEO, to Kara’s side, whenever she was hurt, holding her hand and talking to her in the hope that Kara could hear her, that the sound of Cat’s voice could lure her back to consciousness.

It didn’t feel right to touch her, this time, and she wasn’t sure that Kara would appreciate the sound of her voice, either, so she stayed silent, pulling her tablet out of her bag and absentmindedly replying to a few emails.

She didn’t know what she would do if Kara woke up and found Cat sitting beside her. Would she recoil, like she had when she’d woken up in bed beside her? Would she ask Cat what she was doing there, revulsion in her eyes? Or would she understand that, just because none of it had really been real, Cat couldn’t just… switch off her feelings, and go back to the way things were before, pretend that Kara meant nothing to her?

Alex returned after a few hours, when Cat’s back was beginning to protest from being sat in the same position for so long, carrying a plastic bag that smelled like Chinese food and made Cat’s mouth water, because she hadn’t eaten since breakfast, almost twelve hours ago.

“Here,” Alex said, handing Cat a container. “You need to eat something.”

“You remembered,” Cat murmured, when she opened the lid to find moo shu pork within, her go-to on those games nights they’d all used to spend together.

“It’s kind of hard to forget,” Alex replied, around a mouthful of noodles, as she dropped into the seat beside Cat’s, “with all the time we’ve spent together.”

Cat didn’t really know what to say to that.

“How are you coping with everything?” Alex asked, once they’d both finished eating, setting her empty container down by her feet. “Are you adjusting okay?”

Cat’s laugh was bitter enough to make Alex wince. “Would _you_ be adjusting okay?”

“Honestly? I think I’d be a wreck.” Alex was nothing if not honest, and Cat had always admired that about her, knowing that she could always count on Alex for a truthful opinion. That had terrified her the first time that they’d officially met when Cat was Kara’s girlfriend and not Kara’s boss, but it meant that when Alex had pulled her aside to tell her that, as long as Cat never broke Kara’s heart, she would always be welcome in the Danvers family, she knew that she and Kara had her approval, and that meant the world to the both of them.

“Then you have your answer,” Cat murmured, and she’d been doing so well at holding herself together, at pretending that everything was fine (thanks to three very public divorces, she’d had years of practice, of projecting an air of indifference when inside, she was a mess), but sitting there at Kara’s bedside with Alex’s sympathetic gaze trained on her face, Cat started to crumble.

She hadn’t talked about this with anyone, save Carter, and even that had been brief because she never wanted to fall apart in-front of her son. Opening up had never come easy to Cat, and she was sure if she started talking to Alex, she was going to fracture, and considering in this life, they’d only met a handful of times, Cat didn’t know if she could handle the other woman seeing that side of her.

“I… I know that technically, you and I don’t really know one another,” Alex started, sounding like she was picking the words carefully, “but I still have all of those other memories, and I… I won’t ever forget how happy you made my sister.”

At the words, Cat tensed her jaw in an effort not to let any tears fall, her heart feeling like it was being squeezed in a vice because she’d been trying so hard not to remember, not think about Kara, not to remember the sound of her laugh, the way her eyes had crinkled when she’d smiled, the sparkle in them whenever Cat told her that she loved her.

But oh, she remembered it all, was sure she’d never forget it, that it would haunt her until the day she left this world behind.

“And if you ever need anything,” Alex continued, “I’ll be here.”

“Thank you.” Cat didn’t know if it was an offer that she would ever take up, but it was comforting to know that it was there, that perhaps she hadn’t lost everything (because she hadn’t just gained Kara, when they’d been together, she’d gained a whole family, too, had been accepted by Alex and Eliza and all of Kara’s friends with open arms, and where before her life had been quiet and lonely, with Kara it had been bright and chaotic and _lively_ , and Cat had loved her all the more for it) that she’d used to have. “I should probably be getting going.” She felt uncomfortable, with Alex there, more like she shouldn’t be there, even though she knew the other woman didn’t care. “Spend some time with Carter before he goes to bed.”

“How is he?” Alex asked, as Cat began to gather up her things, and Cat knew that the two of them had been close – she hadn’t expected it, because Carter was so quiet and reserved, but around Alex he had lit up, and she’d often let him spend the night at her place so that Cat and Kara could spend some time alone.

“He’s okay,” Cat replied, touched that she was asking. “I think he probably misses you.” Cat’s eyes flitted to Kara. “Both of you.” Kara was still sleeping peacefully, and Cat hoped she would recover soon. “If you ever wanted to pop over sometime, I’m sure he’d like that.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

It was another offer that Cat wasn’t sure would be upheld, but at least she’d made it.

“Will you let me know when she wakes up?” Cat asked – _when_ , not _if_ – flashing Alex a small, grateful smile when she nodded. “And could you… could you not mention that I was here?” Cat couldn’t imagine how Kara was feeling about it all, didn’t want to impose on her life any more than she absolutely had to, and it would be better for them both if Kara didn’t know how much Cat still cared for her, that she’d drop everything without a second thought to rush to her side.

That she was still absolutely, completely and irrevocably in love with her.

“Okay,” Alex agreed, albeit reluctantly. “Goodnight, Cat.”

“Goodnight, Alex.” Cat cast one last, long look at Kara before she left, just in-case she didn’t have another chance – not because she didn’t think that Kara wouldn’t wake up (she _had_ to wake up, because a world without Kara was not something that Cat was willing to comprehend), but because distance would be the best thing for both of them.

When she got home, she found Carter waiting for her on the couch, his schoolwork spread out on the coffee table in-front of him and one of his favourite movies playing on the TV.

“Is she okay?” Was the first thing out of his mouth, and Cat blinked at him in confusion for one long moment, because she hadn’t told him where she was, just that she’d be home late, before she realised that he must’ve seen the video and known that Cat wouldn’t have been able to stay away.

He looked worried, and Cat knew that going from having two full-time parents to one who was barely holding herself together must be taking its toll.

“She’s recovering,” Cat answered, kicking off her shoes and collapsing on the couch beside him. “They’re hoping she’ll be up and about soon.”

“Did you talk to her?”

“No,” Cat shook her head. “She was unconscious the whole time I was there.”

“Are _you_ okay?” He asked, his eyes so serious and so much wiser than his age, and Cat reached out to squeeze his hand.

“I will be.” She didn’t know _when_ that would be, exactly, but she was determined ensure it wasn’t a lie.

She spent the evening curled up on the couch with her son, watching another movie and munching on popcorn, and it helped ease some of the strain on her heart, helped her to stop thinking about Kara, lying prone and powerless in that bed, and when her phone beeped with a text a couple of hours later when she was getting ready for bed, Cat was quick to reach for it.

_She’s awake_ , was all it said, and Cat breathed out a heavy sigh as she clutched the phone to her chest and fell back onto her bed, knees feeling suddenly weak with the force of the relief that flooded through her at reading Alex’s words.

Kara was okay, Kara was awake, and Cat would sleep easier with that knowledge rattling around in her brain, because she may no longer have Kara by her side but god, she could survive so long as she knew the girl was still out there, somewhere, didn’t know what she would if anything had ever happened to her.

That had been a big contention in their relationship, because Cat had never wanted to begrudge Kara for being Supergirl, for putting herself in danger to save others (her selflessness and kindness were just two of the reasons why Cat loved her), but it had been so hard, watching the woman she loved risk her life day after day, never knowing if the last kiss they’d shared would be the last _ever_ , never knowing for sure if Kara would make it through the day to come home to her.

(Of course, now Cat knows that they _have_ shared their last kiss together – it was sweet and chaste, a goodnight before they’d fallen asleep wrapped in each other’s arms, and if Cat had known, if she’d have _known_ , then oh, she’d have kissed her deeper, longer, would’ve never stopped).

Her message chain with Alex was still open when she unlocked her phone after climbing under the covers, and Cat should have probably deleted everything from it when her memories had been restored but she hadn’t, and in the wake of the day that she’d had, in the muted darkness of her bedroom, she allowed herself a moment of weakness, and opened up her thread with Kara.

_Want me to pick up anything on the way home?_ Was the last text that Kara had sent her, the night before everything had changed. That was innocuous but there were countless others that weren’t (the ‘I love yous’, the ‘I miss yous’, the ‘I can’t stop thinking about yous’, the photographs that they’d sent to one another – some innocent, some decidedly _not_ ), and Cat scrolled back weeks and months and even years, tears burning in her eyes.

It was only when her gaze became so blurry that she could no longer read the words that she stopped, setting her phone down perhaps a little too forcefully on her bedside table if the way it wobbled was any indication.

She still didn’t have the strength to delete the messages, the evidence that, at least in another life, Kara had felt the same way, and she fell into a fitful sleep with Kara’s voice swirling around in her mind, whispering that she loved her.


	5. Chapter 5

Kara woke with a groan, pain radiating from her chest, and squeezed her eyes back closed, praying she’d fall back asleep and escape the discomfort, wake back up when she was fully healed.

“Kara?”

At the sound of her sister’s voice, she cracked one eye back open, and found Alex’s worried face looming over her, a flicker of relief passing over her expression when their eyes met.

“Kara are you okay?”

“Ow,” was the only answer she felt able to give, and Alex chuckled and reached down to squeeze the back of Kara’s hand.

“You had us all worried for a while there.” Alex settled back into the seat beside Kara’s bed as she slowly blinked herself awake, grimacing when she saw the IV nestled in her arm – she’d always hated needles, and had been glad that her skin was impenetrable to them when she was younger. “Kara, you could’ve died.”

“But I didn’t,” she replied, before sucking in a sharp breath when an attempt to raise her arm sent a shockwave of pain through her. “Rao, why does everything hurt?”

“Because you fell almost three hundred metres,” Alex answered, and that sounded like a _lot_. “You’re lucky you didn’t break every bone in your body.”

“I _feel_ like I did.” She’d never been very good with pain, because it wasn’t an experience she had often – she’d never learned to deal with it, hadn’t felt it for years until the first time she’d lost her powers, and that had only happened on a few occasions since. “I’m guessing I’m powerless?”

“For the foreseeable future, yes.”

“Wonderful,” Kara sighed. “I don’t suppose you wanna throw yourself down an elevator shaft to see if that brings them back, do you?”

“No.”

“You sure?”

“Positive.”

She let Alex fuss over the machines that beeped all around her, because she knew that looking after her was one of the few things that helped Alex feel better whenever Kara was incapacitated.

“Did you eat takeout in here?” Kara asked, noticing the plastic bag from Kara’s favourite Chinese sitting beside Alex’s chair. “And you didn’t get me any?”

“I thought the smell of food might wake you up,” Alex said before sticking a thermometer into Kara’s mouth.

“There’s really not anything in there for me?” She waited until the thermometer had been removed before asking. “Because that seems like a very full bag.”

“I was hungry.” Alex was avoiding looking her in the eye, and Kara’s gaze narrowed, because she’d always been able to tell when her sister was lying.

“Was there someone else in here with you?” Kara pressed. “Actually, I think I remember hearing voices when I was out of it.” It was a hazy memory, but she was sure she hadn’t imagined it.

“J’onn came in for a while.”

“J’onn _hates_ Chinese,” Kara replied, frowning. “And I’m pretty sure it was a woman’s voice.”

“Lena also came.”

“No, she didn’t.” Their relationship was still too rocky for that. “Alex, why are you lying to me?”

“Okay, fine!” Alex set down the clipboard she’d been writing on with some force and sat back in her chair. “It was Cat.”

“Cat was here?” Kara frowned. “Why?”

“Really, Kara?” Alex turned to her sister with exasperation. “If _you_ saw a video of the woman that you loved falling to the ground, clearly badly injured, what would _you_ do?”

“I… I don’t know.” Kara’s voice was small, the words setting her mind racing. What _would_ she do, if she found out that something had happened to Cat?

She knew the answer.

She’d go to her, she’d break the sound barrier in the race to be by her side, to _protect_ her, just like she had when she’d fallen from the plane – the _President_ had been on that plane but Kara had only had eyes for Cat – and she’d do it without hesitation.

“But why didn’t you just tell me she came? Why lie?”

“Because she didn’t want you to know she was here,” Alex sighed, running a hand through her hair.

“Why not?”

“If I had to guess?” Alex leant back in the chair and kicked her feet up onto Kara’s bed, careful not to jostle her. “Because she doesn’t want to make things weird for you. Because she doesn’t want you to know that she still cares about you. Her face when she saw you on that bed, Kara… she has her memories back, but she’s still so in love with you.”

Kara may have many broken bones, but the pain of those paled in comparison to the way her heart clenched at Alex’s words, to imagine Cat, alone and hurting, somewhere out there in the city. She hated that she was the one doing this to her, that she couldn’t do anything to _help_ , that reaching out to Cat like she desperately wanted to might only make everything worse.

She’d still been thinking things with Cat over when the metahuman had attacked National City (dealing with them was another unexpected side-effect of Earth prime, but at least it was keeping her busy), after her run in with Barry and Sara.

She was pretty set on telling Cat how she felt (or how she _could_ feel, if they got to know one another again), when she’d been struck from the sky, and after finding out that Cat had been at her bedside, that feeling only intensified.

But she was going to be bed-bound for at least the next day, seeing as she could barely lift her arm without wanting to cry, and she doubted that Cat would be returning to visit her again if she hadn’t wanted Kara to know she was even there in the first place, so she supposed that it would just have to wait.

“What happened to the meta who attacked me?” Kara decided it was time to change the subject. “Did he get away?”

“He’s in a cell at Iron Heights in Central City, thanks to the Flash,” Alex replied. “It’s pretty handy having all your superfriends a phonecall instead of a whole Earth away, not gonna lie.”

Kara had to agree with that – this new earth wasn’t all bad, despite how things had started for her.

“He said he hopes you feel better soon, by the way,” Alex added. “And that next time you drop by, takeout is on you. I didn’t know you’d seen him since Crisis.”

“When I left your place the other night I went for a flight to clear my head, but I guess I went pretty far and ended up running into him in Star City. I hung out with him and Sara for a few hours.”

“He also said that he hoped you’d manage to figure everything out.” Alex was watching Kara’s face closely. “Although he didn’t say what _everything_ was.” Alex folded her arms across her chest and looked at Kara more than a little accusingly. “I know something’s been bothering you ever since this whole Crisis thing, but what I don’t know is why you feel like you can talk to a guy you barely know and not me.”

There was hurt in Alex’s eyes, and Kara worried at her bottom lip, knowing that she was the reason for it. Her relationship with Alex had been strained ever since Crisis, because Kara didn’t know how to talk about it, but she knew if she didn’t want to damage her relationship with her sister, she was going to have to try.

“I can talk to them because no-one… no-one else really _understands_ what it’s like, being in this world and not knowing anything about it. You have both sets of memories but you weren’t there, you didn’t watch everyone you love be vaporised, you didn’t spend months in the Vanishing Point thinking you were never going to make it out of there alive.”

Talking about it was hard because she hadn’t fully had time to process it all – instead she’d buried it deep, let herself think about other things, be distracted by all the new things in this world and her relationship with Cat – but talking about it brought everything rushing back, the pain and the despair, the utter hopelessness of being stuck with no way out.

“The other paragons, they’re the only ones who really get it. I was supposed to be the paragon of hope but I lost all hope in that place, Alex. I didn’t think I was ever going to see you again.”

“But you did.” Alex dropped her feet to the floor so she could shuffle closer, taking Kara’s hand between her own. “You made it through. And I’m not going anywhere.”

“I’m sorry I’ve been so distant lately,” Kara murmured, squeezing Alex back as hard she could manage (which was, admittedly, not very). “I just… it’s _hard_ , being on this earth. Literally my whole life is different, and I find it hard to talk to you because… because you have all these memories of me that I don’t have, you know? And I know that’s not your fault, but I can’t stop feeling like that.”

“I’m just glad you told me.”

“Sorry for not saying anything sooner.”

“Is everything different for the other paragons, too?” Alex asked, a while later, after fiddling with a few of Kara’s machines. The question was posed innocently enough – Alex was probably just thinking out loud – but it still set Kara on edge.

“Not everything,” Kara replied, trying to keep her face blank. “They’ve gotten people back that they’ve lost, but that’s all.”

“Huh. I wonder why that is?” Alex had a thoughtful look on her face. “Why didn’t you get back someone you lost? Although I guess Lex didn’t… but he _did_ get something that he wanted.” Alex’s mind was working quickly, and Kara knew it was just a matter of time before she came to the same conclusion that she, Sara and Barry had the other night. “But you didn’t. Unless…” Alex turned to look at Kara. “Unless there’s something you’re not telling me?”

“Sara and Barry seem to think that when we reset the timeline, we made something happen. Like, we got our true desire or something. So, Lex got power, Barry got his parents back, Sara got her sister back, and I…”

“You got Cat back,” Alex finished, looking a little unsteady on her feet.

“Back would imply I ever had her in the first place,” Kara pointed out, as Alex sat back down. “But I never did.”

“Did you want to?” Alex asked, and Kara’s silence spoke volumes. “Jesus _Christ_ Kara, seriously?!”

“It wasn’t so unbelievable in this other life!” Kara’s raised voice hurt her ribs, and she took a breath to try and calm herself down.

“Because none of that was real!” Alex cried.

“It could’ve been,” Kara replied, voice much quieter. “I felt the same, I just never… I was never brave enough to do anything about it. Or I repressed it so much that I convinced myself it was just a harmless crush.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Come on, Alex. How would you have reacted to that? You thought she treated me terribly. You said yourself that when we got together, I couldn’t work up the courage to tell you for months. Why would I say anything when there was nothing going on?”

“I just had no idea you felt this way about her.”

“To be honest, neither did I? I pushed everything down, and when she left I… I got over it. Except apparently I didn’t, not really, because this earth brought us together, and apparently that’s my doing. My greatest desire.”

“That’s… a lot.”

“Yeah.”

“Are you… are you going to tell Cat about this?”

“I want to.” Kara wouldn’t mind talking it out with someone, though – Alex was unlikely to let her do something stupid. “I think she should know.”

“You know she might not take it well.” Alex said gently. “After everything she’s been through. She… she really cares about you, Kara. And hearing this… it might be hard for her.”

“I know.” It was why Kara hadn’t flown herself directly to Cat’s door after returning from Star City. “And I know that nothing might come from it – I wouldn’t blame her if she didn’t want anything to do with me after everything I’ve put her through. I wouldn’t blame her for wanting to protect herself from ever having to lose me again.” Be that because things just didn’t work out (they’d worked before, sure, but they were different people, then, and Cat didn’t really _know_ her anymore), or because something happened (Kara knew she didn’t exactly have the safest job in the world). “But I… I have to _try_. If this really _is_ a second chance for me and Cat I… I don’t want to waste it.”

“Okay. If that’s what you want to do, then I support you.”

“Really?”

“Of course.” Alex’s blessing meant more to her than Kara had ever thought it could. “I remember how happy you were, remember? How could I _not_ want that for you? For the both of you.”

“Thank you.”

“But you can’t do anything about it tonight,” Alex continued, climbing to her feet. “And you should really get some rest. You need to start healing.”

“Yes boss.” Kara braved the pain for long enough to give Alex a salute, and got the finger in response.

“I’ll come and see you in the morning. Do _not_ get out of this bed.”

“I won’t.” She’d learned that lesson the hard way, after losing her powers one time – she hadn’t thought her injures were that bad, until she’d blacked out almost as soon as she’d been upright.

“I’ll be upstairs if you need me.” There were cots for agents to crash in if they ever needed to, and Alex used them whenever Kara was injured. “Just call.”

“I will,” Kara promised, and she’d expected to lie awake for a long time when Alex was gone, after their heavy conversations, but she must’ve been more tired than she realised, because Alex had barely shut the door behind her before Kara had drifted into sleeps sweet embrace.

//

She was sentenced to a further night’s stay in the medbay by a very stern Alex, and by the time she was allowed to go home, Kara was full of restless energy.

She was healing, but _slowly_ , and her powers were still out, which meant all she was allowed to do after leaving the DEO was hole up at Alex’s place, and whilst, unlike the DEO, Alex had video games and Netflix and all the snacks Kara could ask for, she was still _bored_.

After one day of being on her own while Alex was at work, Kara asked Nia to send her some work to do, which helped, a little, but there was only so much she could do from Alex’s couch when she wasn’t even technically supposed to be working at all.

On the third day of her imprisonment (Alex had told her to stop calling it that, but that’s what it _felt_ like, when she was abandoned up six flights of stairs with a broken leg and absolutely no ability to use a pair of crutches), she’d healed enough to be able to walk, and took advantage of her new found freedom by going outside to soak up some of the sun’s precious rays.

She wandered the streets of National City without purpose, and scoffed at herself when she realised she was drifting closer and closer to Cat’s building, like a magnetic force was pulling her close.

She stood on the sidewalk and looked up towards the penthouse floor, even though it was impossible to see anything – especially with her terrible human eyesight.

It turned out that human Kara should probably have actual prescription lenses, instead of fake ones.

She wondered if Cat was up there now, or if she was at work. Did she know that Kara was feeling better? Or did she just know that she was still alive?

What would she do, if Kara went up there and knocked on her door and told her everything that had been on her mind since she’d left Star City?

She didn’t know how long she stood there, looking up at the apartment that had used to be her home, but she was so transfixed that she didn’t notice the front door of the building open, a teenager stepping out onto the pavement and pausing behind her.

“Kara?”

She jumped at the sound of her name, whirling around and feeling her heart begin to pound when she found Carter squinting down at her, hands curled loosely around the straps of the backpack on his shoulders, and oh, _no_ , this had never been a part of any of her plans.

“What are you doing here?” He asked her, frowning, and Kara wracked her brain for an answer that wouldn’t make her look like some kind of weird stalker.

“I was just… hoping I could pick up a few more of my things,” she lied, relieved that a plausible answer had struck. “But I wasn’t sure if your Mom was home.”

“Oh.” Carter blinked at her before glancing back toward the building’s entrance. “Well, she’s not, so I can let you up if you want.”

“Oh, uh, that’s okay, I wouldn’t want to intrude.” Kara became a ball of nervous energy the longer Carter looked at her, hyper-aware of the fact that he’d used to see her as a mother-figure but she’d only technically met him a handful of times. “You’re probably busy. Shouldn’t you be in school?”

“It’s the holidays,” he replied, like she was an idiot, but how she was supposed to remember when the holidays were when she didn’t know anyone that was in school? “And it’s fine. Come on.”

He turned to head back inside, and, without the power of superspeed to make a quick exit, Kara was left with no choice but to follow him.

“Are you, um, okay?” He asked when they were inside the elevator and whizzing up to the top floor, his gaze fixed firmly on his shoes. “I saw you get hurt the other day.”

“I’m a little banged up, but I’m fine.” She wondered how he’d felt, seeing that video, if he’d have reacted in a similar way to Cat. “I, uh, I know this must be weird for you - ”

“ _That’s_ an understatement,” he cut her off, with no shortage of teenage sarcasm, and Kara eyed him curiously, seeing no trace of the shy kid she’d used to know. “I had two moms, and now I have half of one.”

“I… I’m sorry.” There was nothing she could possibly to say to make it better, but she knew she couldn’t say _nothing_.

“You don’t have to be sorry.” It was the same thing Cat had said to her, when she’d had her memories restored. “I know it’s not your fault. It’s just… it’s easier to blame someone for this and the only person I really can is you.”

The ding of the elevator doors opening saved Kara from having to formulate a response, and she was slow to follow him out of it and down the hall, still trailing a few steps behind as he unlocked and opened the front door.

When she’d been Cat’s assistant, she’d been to her apartment a few times, either to fetch something or to drop things off, but she’d never lingered long, and she’d certainly never been inside the bedroom that she’d woken up in the other morning (though she had dreamt about Cat pulling her into it a dozen times, wondered what it looked like inside, what Cat’s sheets would feel like against her bare skin).

Stepping into the entryway now, she allowed herself to look around in the way she hadn’t allowed herself the other day, and couldn’t help but notice the differences from the last time she remembered it. The decoration was different, and Kara wondered if that had been something she and Cat had done together, when Kara had moved in, to make it feel more like a home for both of them, so she didn’t feel out of place.

It was certainly brighter than it used to be, shades of gray replaced with white and blue, but the walls were largely bare, lighter squares of wallpaper indicating that there had used to be picture frames hanging there, and Kara clenched her jaw as she imagined Cat purging every reminder of Kara from this apartment, in an effort to make the pain easier to bear.

“I think my Mom put all of your stuff in the guest room,” Carter said, looking awkward as he hovered beside Kara. “Do you… do you remember where that is?”

“I think so.”

“I have to go meet my friends at the library.” He was already starting to back out of the door. “My mom shouldn’t be back until late, so just take as much time as you need.”

“Thank you, Carter. And I… I really am sorry, for everything. And for springing myself on you – I know I can’t be your favourite person right now.”

“Like I said, it’s not your fault,” he shrugged, but his eyes looked so sad and Kara ached with the desire to take all of his pain away. “And,” he paused, looking down at the ground and shuffling his weight from one foot to the other, “you’ve always been one of my favourite people.” His voice was soft. “That’s not going to change, no matter what. You’re still going to be the person who taught me how to paint, who spent hours helping me with my homework, who comforted me when I first got my heart broken. I know you don’t remember any of that, but I always will, and I… I want to thank you for that. You always treated me like I was your own kid, and I… I never felt like I had two parents before, but with you I did.”

It was the most that Kara had ever heard him say, and the words brought tears to her eyes, and she bit down hard on her bottom lip in an effort not to let any fall.

“And I wouldn’t change anything, I wouldn’t give up the past three years with you in my life for anything, even though it hurts how, because it was all worth it. And I just want you to know how grateful I am for everything that you’ve done for me.”

“I wish I could remember it,” Kara said quietly, and when he looked up to meet her gaze, his smile was sad. “I really wish I could’ve gotten to see you grow up, Carter, because you’re a really amazing kid. I hope you know that.”

“Thanks.” His smile brightened, just a little. “I, uh, I really should get going, though.” He tugged his backpack back into place on his shoulders. “See you, Kara.”

“Bye, Carter.”

She watched him go, and the apartment felt much bigger, much more imposing, with him gone. She could just wait a few moments and leave, considering she hadn’t actually come here with the intention of grabbing any more of her things, but seeing as she was already there, and she _had_ left a few things behind in her haste to get out of there the other day… she may as well take some of it home, and get it out of Cat’s way. The guest room was down the hall from Cat’s bedroom, and Kara paused by the door of the room she and Cat had used to share together, resting her palm on the smooth wood but not daring to push it open.

Taking a deep breath, she continued onwards to her destination, pressing open the door and slipping inside. The bed was covered in black bags, and a quick glance inside one of them revealed some of Kara’s clothes.

Another was filled with the photo frames that must’ve been removed from the walls, and Kara knew it was a bad idea to look through them, but she couldn’t help it, desperately wanted to see a little more of the life she and Cat had used to have, the life that _she_ could’ve had, if she’d been willing to take a chance.

There were dozens of photographs inside, of Cat and Kara, of Kara and Carter, or all three of them together. She and Cat smiling together, dressed to the nines at what must be some press event or gala, mixed in with more candid shots taken in Cat’s home, and Kara even recognised a few that had been taken in Alex’s apartment. In one, she had her arm around a smiling Carter, dressed in robes on the day of what must have been his middle school graduation.

There were Christmas and Thanksgiving photos from both National City and Midvale, and Kara’s breath caught at a family picture taken in Kara’s childhood home, her, Cat and Carter sat on the couch and surrounded by Alex, Eliza and even a grinning Clark and Lois.

In every one, the thing that struck Kara the most was how _happy_ she looked, how happy _both_ of them looked. She’d never seen Cat filled with as much warmth and love as she was in those pictures, and she didn’t think she _herself_ had ever looked the way she did when she was looking at Cat.

She sat on Cat’s guestroom floor and surrounded herself with endless frames, desperately wishing that had the memories behind each and every one, craving that kind of love and happiness that she’d never truly had but had always wanted.

It wasn’t _fair_.

Why couldn’t she remember? Why had something so wonderful been taken from her? Why hadn’t she just _told_ Cat how she felt, three years ago before she’d let her slip through her fingers?

This might be a second chance, but for Cat, it would be a second _everything_ , and was she willing to go through that again? For Kara, it would be their first kiss, their first ‘I love you’, their first night together, but for Cat, it wouldn’t even be the hundredth, and was that something that either one of them would be able to face?

Kara was torn from her thoughts by the sound of the front door opening, and she was quick to clamber to her feet and begin to stuff the frames back into the bag. She assumed it was Carter, forgetting something, and didn’t want him to find her snooping, hastily set the bag back on the bed and grabbed the one containing her clothes, hauling it towards the door.

“Sorry, Carter, I - ” She froze when she rounded the corner of the hallway and found that it wasn’t Carter standing there at all.

It was Cat who stood in the centre of the living room, frozen with her phone halfway to her ear and her foot halfway out of her shoe, staring at Kara like she’d just seen a ghost, and Kara supposed that that was probably what she was, to Cat, these days – an echo of the woman that she’d used to know.

It was the first time that Kara had seen Cat since she’d bolted from this very apartment after restoring her memories, and Kara allowed herself to look at the other woman in a way she hadn’t really allowed herself to before.

She looked exhausted, defeated, bags under her red eyes, her face pale and a little less put together than usual, and Kara hated that it was all her fault, even as she thought that Cat was still beautiful, that she could never _not_ be beautiful, not to her.

She’d wanted to tell Cat how she felt, but she didn’t know how she’d ever be able to find the strength to tell her, because standing there, in-front of her, facing the complete and utter destruction that Kara had wrought on her life, it was hard for her to find any words at all.

“Oh, um, I’m sorry.” Rambling had always been her strong suit when she was nervous – that was one thing that hadn’t changed since her time as Cat’s assistant. “I… I came to pick up some more of my things.” She lifted up the bag in her hands. “Carter let me in. He… he said you wouldn’t be back for a while, so it would be okay.”

“I… I have a migraine,” Cat explained, her voice so very quiet, so uncertain, so unlike the Cat that Kara knew. “I couldn’t face being in the office so I decided to work from home instead.”

“Oh. Right.” She sounded like an _idiot_ , but she didn’t know what else to say, hadn’t _prepared_ herself for this moment, for seeing Cat again. “I’ll uh, I’ll get out of your way then.” She began to skirt around the edge of the room, keeping her back to the wall, Cat watching her every move. “S-sorry, I shouldn’t have come.”

“Kara, wait - ” Cat called, but Kara didn’t _want_ to wait, wanted to get out of there before she said something stupid that could hurt them both even more, whirled around and went to bolt straight for the door but in her haste to escape she didn’t look where she was stepping and tripped over Cat’s other discarded shoe.

Normally, that wouldn’t have been an issue, but without her powers and her usual superior reflexes, she didn’t have time to stop herself from falling.

The bag flew out of her hands, and the last thing she remembered before everything went black was the wall rushing up to meet her.


	6. Chapter 6

Kara’s eyes fluttered open just as Cat was pressing an icepack to the bump on her forehead.

Dazed pools of cerulean looked up at her, blinking in confusion, and Cat lost herself for a moment in those gorgeous eyes, eyes that she’d always loved, eyes that now seemed to haunt her mind, both waking and sleeping.

“Don’t move,” Cat cautioned, when Kara looked like she was going to try and scramble away. “You could have really hurt yourself.”

“At least let me lie on the couch,” Kara groaned, lifting a hand to gingerly prod at her head. “Your floor isn’t very comfortable.”

That, Cat could agree with, her knees, pressed against the hardwood, screaming at her that she wasn’t young enough to be kneeling like this anymore.

“Okay,” Cat acquiesced, getting ungracefully to her feet before reaching a hand out to Kara to help her up, too, trying to ignore the electric feeling of Kara’s skin beneath her fingertips. Kara wobbled, once she was upright, so Cat didn’t let her go until she was safely situated on the couch, Cat choosing to settle on the coffee table in-front of it. “Here.” She held out the icepack. “It’ll keep the swelling down.”

“Thanks.” Kara took it from her and hissed as she pressed it against her skin. “ _Ow_.”

“Yes, well, that tends to happen when you run headfirst into a wall,” Cat huffed, folding her arms across her chest, her earlier panic at seeing Kara sprawled out on her floor easing somewhat now that she was awake. “No-one’s ever been so desperate to get away from me that they’ve done _that_.”

Not that Cat necessarily blamed her. She _had_ surprised the girl, after all, when all she was trying to do was fetch her things, but Cat had been caught so off-guard, seeing Kara in her apartment, had thought, for a moment, when she’d stepped out of the hallway, that she’d been hallucinating, that maybe her head wasn’t pounding from a migraine, but from some kind of brain tumour, instead.

“I’m sorry.” Kara at least had the grace to look sheepish. “Not my finest moment.”

“No,” Cat agreed, lips pursed. “It wasn’t.” Cat itched with the desire to check her over, to reach out and touch her, to make sure that she was okay, and she pushed her hands underneath her thighs to ensure that she wouldn’t. “I called your sister.” It had been the first thing she’d done, once she’d checked that Kara was still breathing. “She was a little busy, but she said she’d be here as soon as she could.”

“You know, I’m probably fine to - ”

“No,” Cat cut her off, knowing exactly what she was about to say. “You could have a concussion. Do you know what day it is?”

“Uh…” Kara trailed off, scrunching up her nose as she thought. “Wednesday?”

“It’s Thursday.”

“Oh, close enough,” Kara said, waving a dismissive hand. “ _You_ wouldn’t know what say it was if you’d been stuck in a hospital bed, either.”

“Probably not,” Cat agreed. “What’s your name?”

“Kara Danvers,” she sighed.

“And my - ”

“Cat Grant, your son is Carter, my sister is Alex, and this is the apartment you and I used to share before everything went to shit.”

“Well, at least you haven’t got amnesia again,” Cat muttered, and she hadn’t meant for Kara to hear it but her flinch meant she must’ve spoken louder than she intended. “You should drink some water, I’ll go and get you some.”

“Cat, you don’t have to - ”

“I know.” But she’d feel better if she was _doing_ something, instead of sitting there opposite Kara, trying not to drink her in. Her hands, when she reached for a glass, shook, and she took a steadying breath before she filled it and returned to the other room.

“Thanks.” Kara took it from her without complaint, and Cat noticed a tremble in her own fingers when she put it to her lips.

“How are you feeling?” Cat asked, because the poor girl hadn’t had an easy few weeks – she’d faced the end of the world, and the birth of a new one, had her life flipped upside down, nearly died, and now knocked herself out – and Cat figured she should probably clarify. “You said you’d spent a few days in a hospital bed.”

“I know you already knew that,” Kara replied. “I know you came to visit me.”

Cat’s mouth opened to refute the words, but she knew it would be futile. “Alex told you?”

“Don’t be mad at her.” Kara shifted on the couch, dropping the icepack into her lap. “I heard voices while I was out of it and practically forced her to tell me who it was. And I’m okay. Still don’t have my powers, as you can probably tell by the fact that your wall is still intact after meeting my head, but.” She shrugged. “I’m healing.”

“Good,” Cat said, and she _meant_ it – it had been torturous, not truly knowing how Kara truly was, not being able to see for herself that she was still alive and breathing, even though she knew that Alex would tell her if there was anything amiss.

“You could’ve stayed, you know,” Kara replied, her voice soft, shy, almost, eyes fixed on the wall behind Cat’s head. “I wouldn’t have minded.”

“Even though I’m practically a stranger?”

“Oh, please,” Kara scoffed, eyes flitting back to meet Cat’s. “You _know_ that’s not true. You’d never be a stranger to me, Cat. We spent hours working together every day for three years. I didn’t… I didn’t forget all that just because you left town. If anything it’s the other way around – you knew this other Kara so well, and now I’m completely different.”

“You’re not,” Cat murmured. “You might be a little more bloodied and bruised, might have a few more scars on that heart of yours, but deep down, you’re still that bright and sunny girl in the yellow dress that walked into my office and changed everything.” It was perhaps a little much, but Cat had learned a long time ago that trying to hide her feelings from Kara never worked, and besides, the girl already knew how much she meant to Cat, in both this reality and the false one. “You might think I never knew you, never saw you, but I always did, Kara.”

“You didn’t show it.” Kara’s smile was wry. “I had no idea you felt that way.”

“Which is exactly what I wanted,” Cat sighed. “You were never supposed to find out.”

“Why?” Kara asked, so quiet that Cat barely heard the question at all, but there was a curious, open expression on her face.

“Oh, Kara, a multitude of reasons.” She thought back to those days, the ones where the brightest part of her work day was Kara’s sunny greeting in the morning, a steaming hot latte in hand, how Kara had always been able to soothe even her most vicious of moods, how she’d always been there with exactly what Cat needed, without her having to ask. “It would be completely unprofessional, for a start – I was in such a position of power over you, and I never would have wanted you to feel like you _had_ to reciprocate.” Cat shuddered at the mere thought – Kara had to be the one to make the first move. “Then there was the obvious age gap, the fact that I was a single mother of a teenager, the fact that I was practically married to my job, the several previous failed relationships,” Cat ticked them all off on her fingers as she went through them. “I never wanted to ruin you, like I had with everyone else.”

“I didn’t… I didn’t know you felt that way.” Kara blinked at her, clearly in shock, and Cat feared she’d said too much, made the girl feel even more awkward than she already must. “If I’d have known…” She trailed off, and Cat wondered what the end of that sentence could possibly be. “If I’d have known, maybe I would’ve been a little braver.”

Cat didn’t comprehend the words, for one long moment, staring at Kara dumbly, like _she_ was the one that had just received a wicked blow to the head. “What… what do you mean?”

“You told me, when you got your memories restored, that you should’ve known that this,” Kara gestured between the two of them, “was too good to be true, but you were wrong. When you got your memories back, and you told me how you’d used to feel in this reality, I… I should have said something then, but I didn’t want to make everything worse, but the truth is, Cat… this, _us_ , that _could_ have happened on our earth. The night that you left… I wish I could’ve been brave enough to kiss you, but I just… I wasn’t.”

“Kara,” Cat said slowly, her mind spinning. “I need you to think very carefully about what you’re saying right now.”

“I _have_ ,” Kara insisted, voice so very earnest. “Believe me when I say that I haven’t been able to think anything else for days.”

“So this has nothing to do with the fact that you just hit your head?”

“No.” Kara shook her head to illustrate her point, which only made her wince and press the icepack back to it. “I really do mean it, Cat.” She was meeting Cat’s gaze this time, her eyes shining with sincerity. “I always… I always had feelings for you, back then. I just… I never thought I had a chance.”

“ _Why_?”

“Because I’m… me,” Kara shrugged, “and you’re _you._ ”

“Exactly – what on earth could you ever see in me?” Cat asked, and it was a question that she’d asked Kara, other Kara ( _her_ Kara), in the past, because she’d never quite been able to believe that someone as wonderful as Kara would ever settle for her.

“I see so much in you,” Kara replied, voice so soft. “You have these walls that are so high, you put on this prickly persona that you show the world, but I know that underneath it, you’re anything but. You’re kind and compassionate and you care so _much_ , about Carter, about CatCo, about doing what’s right in this awful, awful world. I’ve always admired you, even before I worked for you, your drive, your passion, your determination to find the truth, no matter the cost. You’re incredible, Cat. I’ve always known that.”

The words came rushing out of Kara like a tide, like the floodgates had just been wrenched open, and what she’d kept inside for so long was now tumbling out. When she was done, she paused, and frowned when she saw the expression on Cat’s face.

“What… what’s wrong?”

“N-nothing,” Cat replied, but her voice was shaky and she was sure she was as pale as a ghost but what Kara had just said… it was almost exactly what she’d said in their other life, and Cat felt like she was having the most intense déjà vu she’d ever experienced, felt like she was living in a memory, in an echo of a past that she was still so desperately holding onto. “I just… you’ve said that to me before.”

“See?” Kara said, offering Cat a tentative smile. “I told you – you keep thinking of this other reality like it was such an impossibility, but what I’m _trying_ to tell you is that it never was.”

The words didn’t bring her the comfort that Kara seemed to think they would.

Because wasn’t it just cruel, to dangle that information in-front of her? Cat had been living a life in monochrome since she’d left National City (since she’d lost Kara’s brightness the day she’d left her behind), only to learn now that everything could have been completely different?

That she could have fallen in love again?

That she could’ve had the life that she’d had in this other reality, where the past three years had been full of light and laughter and happiness?

“I don’t… why are you telling me this?” Cat asked, scrambling to her feet and beginning to pace in-front of the coffee table. “ _Why_ , Kara?”

“I…” Kara blinked, looking stunned in the face of Cat’s irritation. “I thought you should know.” Her voice was smaller, now, uncertain, and Cat had to force herself to hold back a bitter laugh. “And to tell you that… maybe we could still have that life, be together. If you wanted to.”

If she wanted to?

God, Cat would give _anything_ for another chance at things with Kara, for another chance at love, but she thought of the blinding pain she’d been in these last few days and couldn’t help but wonder if she had the strength to keep herself together if things fell apart again.

( _When_ , a voice whispered to her in her head, because last time, she’d been convinced that it would all end in flames, but Kara had assured her, over and over again, that she wasn’t going anywhere, until Cat had started to _believe_ her, began planning to spend the rest of her life at Kara’s side, but all of Kara’s platitudes hadn’t saved them in the end, and yes, while it was extremely extenuating circumstances, Cat didn’t know if she could ever truly trust Kara with her heart again).

Then there was the logistics of the whole thing – Cat remembered _everything_ about her relationship with Kara, with startling clarity, but for Kara, they hadn’t even so much as held hands yet. Could she go back to the start, pretend that they were starting fresh, or would taking it slowly be the worst form of torture?

She had three years, _three years_ , of memories of a life with Kara, three years in which the other woman had lived a totally different life, devoid of Cat and Carter, and was it even possible, to try things again?

Did she _want_ to, if she wasn’t sure it would work out?

Was the risk worth the reward?

Cat wasn’t sure, and she was saved having to answer Kara’s question by a loud knock on her front door.

Cat jumped at the noise, and frowned, confused, before she remembered that Alex was supposed to be coming to collect Kara – that phone call felt like it had been made a lifetime ago.

“That’ll be Alex,” Cat said, already moving towards the door. “I’ll go and let her in.”

“Cat, wait - ” Kara tried to stop her, just like she had tried to stop Kara leaving earlier (which had gotten them into this damn mess in the first place), but Cat didn’t falter as she hurried towards the front door, leaving Kara slumped on the couch, looking defeated.

“Cat?” Alex looked alarmed when she got a look at Cat’s face. “What’s wrong? Is Kara okay?” Alex’s voice turned a little panicked as she craned her head to look over Cat’s shoulder to get a glimpse of her sister.

“She’s fine.” Cat stepped aside to let Alex slide past her, trailing a few steps behind as she made her way to the living room.

“Knocking yourself out, Kara?” Alex asked, crouching down in-front of her sister and taking her chin in her hand, turning her head from side to side. “You haven’t done yourself enough damage this week?”

“It was an accident,” Kara huffed, bottom lip poking out in a pout.

“You need to be more careful when you don’t have your powers,” Alex said, taking a light out of her pocket to shine in her sister’s eyes. “You could’ve been seriously hurt.”

“I’m fine.”

“We’re still going to the DEO to get you an MRI.”

“Alex,” Kara groaned, “that’s so unnecessary.”

“No, it’s not – you could have a brain bleed.”

“I do not have a _brain_ bleed.”

Cat struggled to hold back a smile as she listened to them bicker, the familiarity of it washing over her and bringing her some comfort, even as it made her ache with want to have that in her life again.

“Come on, then,” Alex said, apparently satisfied that moving Kara wasn’t going to cause her any further damage. “I’m sure Cat is ready to have her apartment back.”

“Could you… could you give us a minute first, please?” Kara asked, looking towards Cat, who froze where she’d been hovering, just behind the couch and out of Kara’s eye-line.

“Oh, uh, sure.” Alex looked between the two of them curiously. “I’ll go and wait in the hall.”

“Don’t forget Kara’s clothes,” Cat called, when Alex bypassed the bag of them on her way to the door.

“What clothes?” Alex turned back toward her with a frown of confusion on her face, and Cat gestured at the bulky bag of them.

“The ones that she came here to pick up?”

Alex’s frown deepened, until she glanced at her sister’s face, which was wearing an expression that Cat couldn’t see. “Oh!” Alex’s voice was a little high, and considering she was a government agent, Cat was stunned that she was such a terrible actress – it made Cat wonder if Kara had had ulterior motives for coming here, like spilling her guts, although how could she have known that Cat would be home? “Oh, right, _those_ clothes. Of course.”

Alex took the bag with an awkward chuckle before heading for the door, and the silence left in Cat’s apartment when it shut behind her was deafening.

“What were you _really_ doing here?” Cat was the first one to speak, moving to circle the couch until she was standing in-front of Kara. “Because it doesn’t sound like it was really about your things after all. And,” she added, when Kara opened her mouth, “ _don’t_ lie to me.”

“Okay, you’re right, that wasn’t really it,” Kara sighed, running a frustrated hand through her hair. “I didn’t… I didn’t _plan_ to come here. I just… I needed to get out of my sister’s apartment so I started walking and I just ended up here. Probably because I can’t stop thinking about you.” That part was said more quietly, almost a whisper, sounding almost as anguished as Cat felt, whenever Kara crossed her mind. “I never intended to come up here, but then Carter spotted me and I… I panicked. I didn’t know how to explain me loitering outside of your home to him so I just said the first semi-believable explanation I came up with.”

“And when you saw me?”

“Again, panic.” Kara shrugged, expression sheepish. “I… I’ve really wanted to see you again, since the other day but I… I didn’t want to bring you any more pain. I hate that you’re hurting because of me.” That hate was clear to see in her eyes. “You looked so shocked to see me and I hadn’t even thought about what I’d say to you when I saw you again, so I…”

“Ran into a wall,” Cat finished, and Kara groaned.

“I’m never going to live that down, am I?”

“Not likely,” Cat conceded.

“Everything I said before though, I… I really mean it.” Kara’s voice was small, but her eyes burned with sincerity. “I know it’s a lot to think about, and even more to ask, so you don’t have to answer right away but just… promise me you’ll think about it?”

“I promise,” she murmured, because oh, Cat won’t be able to do anything _but_ , once Kara had gone, knew the words would swirl around and around in her head for hours to come. “Now, you should really go and get yourself checked out.” Cat wasn’t ruling out the possibility that Kara’s confession had been brought on by a traumatic brain injury. “And if…” She cleared her throat, the words sticking there, “if anything changes, if you change your mind about anything you’ve said - ”

“I won’t,” Kara interrupted her, but Cat continued like she’d never spoken.

“Then that’s okay – I’ll understand.”

“I won’t,” Kara repeated, but Cat just couldn’t quite bring herself to believe it, not after everything that had happened.

Kara grimaced as she climbed to her feet, but she didn’t wobble like before, seemed sturdy enough as Cat watched her follow her sister to the door. Kara looked back, just before she left, glancing at Cat over her shoulder, like she wasn’t sure when she was next going to see her, like she was committing her to memory and maybe she was – maybe she was worried that Cat was going to reject her, that she’d say she never wanted to see her again.

(Like _that_ would ever happen. It might hurt, seeing Kara, but Cat certainly didn’t want a life devoid of her completely – she’d done that once, and she’d been miserable, didn’t want that again, wanted to keep Kara in her life, if she could, but in what capacity, she just didn’t know).

She threw Cat one last, small smile before she disappeared from view, leaving Cat alone with her thoughts.

The shock of seeing Kara in her apartment followed by the adrenaline that had filled her when Kara had fallen unconscious had chased away the splitting pain in Cat’s head that had brought her home from work early, but without anything to distract her, it came flooding back full force.

With a groan, she went straight to the medicine cupboard in her bathroom and choked down two painkillers before deciding a lie-down in a dark room for the next hour was going to be her best course of treatment.

She’d always suffered from migraines, had gotten used to working through the pain, but this was a bad one, no doubt brought on by stress, lack of sleep and increased alcohol consumption, and she cursed herself as she crawled beneath the covers, willing the pain away.

She knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep – Kara’s revelation had seen to that.

Cat wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to stop thinking about it, about the fact that, all those years ago, Kara had harboured feelings for Cat in the same way Cat had for her – that it hadn’t all been a lie, that there was some truth in this other life that had been created for them, but Cat wasn’t sure that that made the pain of losing it easier to bear.

Because they were going to have to start all over again, and who was to say that it would work out this time? That it wouldn’t end the same? In flames and tragedy, wrecking Cat completely?

She didn’t know what she wanted.

There was a part of her that was desperate to have Kara back, to wrap her arms around her and never let her go again, but there was a part of her that recoiled at the thought of getting her hopes up only to have them dashed again.

And there was Carter to consider, too – he came first, always, and she didn’t want his life to be thrown into disarray again, because of her. But how did she even begin to explain things to him, when she could barely get her thoughts straight herself?

Sighing, Cat rolled onto her other side and squeezed her eyes closed, trying to will herself to sleep, trying to force her mind to quiet.

It didn’t work, but her saving grace came in the form of her front door creaking open, and Carter returning home.

He looked surprised to see her, when she dragged herself out of bed and down the hall, finding him rooting around the cupboards in the kitchen, backpack discarded on the couch.

“Mom? What are you doing here?”

“I didn’t feel so good so I came home early.”

“Are you okay?” He was at her side immediately, face creased with worry. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m fine, sweetheart,” Cat reassured him, squeezing his shoulder. “Just a migraine.”

“You should go back to bed. I’ll bring you some water.”

“I’m okay.”

He looked like he was going to argue – Cat was stubborn, and he definitely took after his mother in that respect – before thinking better of it. “What, um, what time did you come home?”

“You mean did I see Kara?” Cat asked, settling down in a stool at the kitchen counter. “Yes, I did.”

“Oh.” His teeth worried at his bottom lip. “I’m sorry – I wouldn’t have let her up if I knew you’d be back early.”

“You don’t need to be sorry, Carter, you weren’t to know.” Cat watched as he began grabbing things from cupboards, laying a bag of flour, sugar and cocoa powder on the counter. “Making a cake?”

“Yeah. It’s um, Katie’s birthday tomorrow,” he said, turning as shy as he always did whenever he mentioned his current crush. “So I thought I’d make her something. You don’t… you don’t think that’s a bad idea, do you?”

“I think it’s a wonderful idea.” Cat’s heart swelled for him, her sweet, sweet boy – he’d never had a girlfriend, but his heart had been broken by a girl he’d been interested in earlier that year, and Cat hoped that things with Katie would work out better. “Do you want any help?”

“ _Really_?” He asked her, with some of that trademark Grant attitude, eyebrows twitching upwards, and Cat narrowed her eyes at him.

“I can bake,” Cat replied, offended, and Carter shook his head.

“No, you can _cook_ ,” he corrected, reaching for the scales. “You can’t bake. You nearly burned this place down when…” He trailed off, and Cat knew what he had been going to say.

“When I tried to make cookies for Kara,” she finished, smiling softly at the memory, false though it may be – it had been Christmas, their first one together, and Cat had known that it was a tradition of Kara’s, to eat Christmas cookies on Christmas Eve, so she’d attempted to make her some.

Attempted being the key word.

“Did you, um, speak to her when she was here?” Carter asked, aiming for nonchalant while he started to weigh out ingredients – he was a much better baker than Cat, even at sixteen, and _he_ had been the one who’d used to bake Kara her Christmas cookies the following years.

“I did.” Cat didn’t know how much to reveal of what was said, though.

“Me too.” Carter’s face scrunched up in concentration as he carefully cracked open an egg. “She told me she wished she could remember everything we can.”

Cat wished that, too, because that would make things oh so much easier, if they were to try and make another go of things.

“Are you okay?” Carter asked then, scrutinising her face. “After seeing her again?”

“Yes, sweetheart. I’m okay.”

She’d been dreading coming face to face with Kara again (when she was conscious anyway, and not lying in a hospital bed), all of the emotions that it would stir up, but… it hadn’t actually been too bad.

She _did_ feel okay, even though her mind was still spinning, even though she couldn’t stop thinking about what Kara had said, and she still didn’t know what she was going to do, what the future held for the two of them, but at least now there was a _possibility_ , one that didn’t involve her drowning, broken-hearted, in misery for the next few months.

There was nothing she could do to change the past, the chance to change things that had already happened, but the future?

The future was uncertain, changeable, a world of possibilities, hope blooming on the horizon, and for the first time in a long time, Cat felt like maybe everything would be okay, in the end.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think it's safe to say that this is the chapter that you've all been waiting for... hope you enjoy!

“You are _such_ an idiot, Kara.” Alex had refrained from chastising her sister too much on the car ride over to the DEO, but once Kara had had an MRI and been cleared of any internal brain injuries, and they were safely back in Alex’s apartment, her sister let it rip. “What were you thinking, going over there?”

“I _wasn’t_ thinking,” Kara grumbled. “That was the problem.” She kicked off her shoes and leant back against the couch with a heavy sigh, her head starting to pound, the pain originating from the purple mark just about her left eye – it was going to look _horrendous_ in the morning. “And I wasn’t planning on going up there. Definitely didn’t plan on knocking myself out.”

Rao, she really was an idiot, but the sheer panic that had consumed her upon coming face-to-face with Cat hadn’t exactly left her thinking straight.

“You need to eat something.” Alex nudged the box of pizza they’d picked up on the way home toward her sister, but Kara shook her head.

“I’m not hungry.”

“Tough.” Alex had on her best no-nonsense voice, so Kara sighed and reached for a slice, and Alex waited until she’d polished off two before deciding to ask the question that Kara knew she’d been dying to since they’d left Cat’s apartment building nearly two hours ago. “So, are you going to tell me what you wanted to talk to Cat about in private?”

“You already know the answer to that.” Kara definitely hadn’t gone to Cat’s building with the intention of telling her how she felt, but sitting on Cat’s couch, maybe a little delirious from the head wound, unable to stop drinking the other woman in, she couldn’t help but let the words slip out.

“You told her, then?” Alex looked surprised, even though Kara had told Alex she was going to – perhaps she’d thought that it had been the drugs talking, when Kara had been in the medbay. “What did she say?”

“Well, you knocked on the door before she said much,” Kara muttered, a little sullen even though she knew Alex hadn’t done it intentionally. “She didn’t exactly take it well.”

“ _That’s_ why she looked like someone had died when she opened the door,” Alex said, mostly to herself, and Kara winced as she remembered the look on Cat’s face, the colour draining away from the shock, the way she’d looked at Kara like she couldn’t quite believe what she was hearing.

Not that Kara blamed her – she _had_ just tipped Cat’s world upside down, for the second time in as many weeks.

But she was still confident that she’d made the right decision, even if Cat ended up turning her down, because at least now she’d tried. She’d done what she hadn’t been able to, all of those years ago – she’d opened up, she’d let Cat in, and now the ball was firmly in the other woman’s court.

It was just going to be torture, waiting to see what she was going to do with it.

Already, she couldn’t stop checking her phone, just in-case Cat had reached out to her – she hadn’t, and each time Kara glanced at her blank lockscreen (now a photo of her and Alex, replacing the one of a beaming Carter and Cat that had made Kara’s heart feel funny whenever she’d looked at it), the sinking feeling in her stomach grew just that little bit deeper.

“She might come around,” Alex said gently, no doubt noticing the crestfallen look on Kara’s face. “Just… give it some time.”

“I know that’s what I need to do, but that doesn’t make it any easier,” Kara huffed, and patience had never been one of her strong suits. “I just wish I could stop her hurting.”

“I know.” Alex shuffled closer to Kara on the couch, slinging an arm over her shoulders and Kara settled her head on her sister’s shoulder. “Everything will work out in the end.”

“You think?”

“I do.” Alex squeezed her softly. “If you’d have told me a couple of weeks ago that you and Cat Grant were meant to be, I’d have probably thought you were crazy, but now… I’m not so sure. And if the timeline reset is something to do with your destiny, then… then don’t you have to believe that you two will make your way back to one another, eventually?”

Kara had never really thought about it like that.

She’d never believed in soulmates – it seemed preposterous, to her, that on a world of seven and a half billion people (and that was just _this_ earth, never mind the rest of the universe, both explored and not), there was just one perfect match.

It seemed impractical, impossible, because how were you supposed to find them?

And she didn’t know if she and Cat were soulmates, or meant to be, but she couldn’t ignore the fact that they seemed to gravitate towards one another. She wondered what would’ve have happened, in this life, if Crisis hadn’t brought Cat back to National City – what would have happened if they’d run into one another a few years down the line?

Would Kara’s feelings have come rushing back? Would Cat’s?

She’d never know the answer to that question, but her sister was right – she had to believe that everything would be okay, that they’d find their way back to one another in the end.

//

Her powers returned when she least expected it.

She was in Alex’s kitchen, bored out of her mind after her fourth day of recuperation, attempting to make pancakes when she dropped an egg – cursing, she leant down to catch it and almost went through the floor and into the apartment below when a burst of superspeed caught her by surprise.

Elated, she abandoned the pancakes in favour of pulling on her suit and slipping out of Alex’s window, catapulting herself into the sky and doing cartwheels in relieved exaltation.

Below, she heard a commotion, and turned back toward the ground, landing lightly on her feet in-front of a metahuman that had just robbed a jewellery store. She grinned when he fired a bullet at her, feeling the pop as it bounced off her suit, and it took very little effort at all to apprehend him, twisting the gun out of shape and his hands behind his back before pushing him into the arms of the waiting NCPD.

She took off once he was safely in the back of a squad car, enjoying the wind whipping through her hair as she made her way downtown to the DEO, practically skipping inside as she went in search of her sister.

“Oh, thank god,” Alex said when she saw her. “If I had to deal with you moping around my apartment for another day I was going to throw you out the window to see if that brought your powers back.”

“Rude.” Kara hip checked her sister maybe a _little_ too hard, and earned a glare in response. “And I don’t mope.”

“Uh, yes you do. You’re a _nightmare_ when you don’t have your powers. It’s bad enough that you turn into essentially a giant helpless baby, but - ”

“Hey, I’m getting better at not injuring myself, thank you very much,” Kara huffed, pouting. “I didn’t have to be hospitalized this time.”

“No, just a brain scan,” Alex deadpanned, “from running into a _wall_.”

“Oh, shut up.”

“And you _were_ moping.”

“Well, I’ve had a mope-worthy few weeks,” Kara muttered, and Alex nodded her head in agreement. “But you know what would help? Beating the crap out of bad guys.”

“I think that could be arranged.”

Alex kept her busy for the rest of the afternoon, and by the time Kara was settling on her sister’s couch later that night, she was exhausted. It was the _good_ kind of exhausted, though, after so many days of endless boredom (and the lack of pain was nice, too), and she felt better than she’d felt in a long time.

She was almost asleep when she heard her phone buzz on the coffee table, snapping her awake.

She still checked it obsessively, even though as the days had worn on, it had become increasingly unlikely that Cat was going to reach out, so she didn’t expect much when she reached for it – maybe a message from Nia or Lena, or a Facebook notification – but this time, it _was_ Cat’s name on the screen, and Kara nearly dropped the phone in shock.

_Welcome back, Supergirl_ , was all it said, but it still made Kara grin like an idiot, because it was _something_ , something after days of silence, of nothing, it was Cat reaching out, extending an olive branch, sending a flicker of hope through Kara’s chest because she knew that if Cat truly didn’t want anything to do with her, she never would have sent the message in the first place.

//

There was an extra bounce in Kara’s step when she went to work the next morning, and for the first time since the reset, she wasn’t filled with dread stepping inside the CatCo building, had no plans to spend her day desperately trying to dodge Cat, and was actually looking _forward_ to the prospect of seeing her again.

She didn’t catch a glimpse of the other woman in her office, though, as she made her way to her desk, and she tried not to be too disappointed as she settled down to make a start on the mountain of work that had started to pile up during her absence.

She knew she was lucky that she had not just one, but two jobs, that she loved. When she’d started working for Cat, it had always been her dream to follow in the footsteps of her cousin and get into journalism, and she was so happy that she’d been able to achieve that – something that she knew wouldn’t have been possible without Cat’s help and guidance, without Cat believing in her enough to give her a chance.

She owed Cat so much, and Kara couldn’t believe that she’d been so _blind_ back then, that she hadn’t been able to see what was right there in-front of her.

After blasting through the edits for her latest article in record time and replying to her very long list of emails, Kara decided to reward herself with a hot chocolate from the fancy machine in the break room.

She was waiting for it too brew, messing around on her phone, when an unfamiliar blonde woman joined her, smiling as she reached for a mug of her own.

Once upon a time, Kara had known every single CatCo employee (no mean feat, considering how often they’d rotated, due to Cat’s _moods_ ), but since the reset, things looked very different, no doubt a result of Cat’s continued control at the helm of the company – Kara very much doubted that Cat’s vision for CatCo was similar to Lena’s or Andrea’s.

It had led to a couple of awkward situations for her, where someone had started talking to her, and Kara had been forced to nod and smile along, all the while with absolutely _no_ idea who they were.

She was certain that it was about to happen again, as the woman leant back against the counter beside Kara, waiting for the kettle to boil.

“Hey, Kara. Heard you were off for a few days – everything alright?”

“Uh, yeah.” Kara tried not to look too awkward as she grabbed her mug, now full to the brim with steaming hot chocolate, and raised it to her lips. “Just a touch of food poisoning.”

It was her usual go-to whenever she needed to take an absence from work – and with the amount of take-out her co-workers had seen her eat, coupled with her painfully obvious lack of culinary skills, it was an easy excuse for them to believe.

“Well, I’m glad you’re feeling better. And I, uh,” she looked uncomfortable, fidgeted with her hair before tucking it behind her ear. “I’m sorry to hear about you and Cat.”

Kara blinked at her for one long moment, struggling to conceive of a world where Cat would willingly divulge any kind of personal information to one of her employees.

“She said you were taking a break?” The woman continued, voice a little uncertain, in the face of Kara’s silence. “Is that… is that not right?”

“Oh. R-right.” It wasn’t something that Kara had had to deal with, so far – she got the impression that everyone she worked with was too afraid of Cat to ask Kara any questions about her, even though people must have noticed that they didn’t spend time together anymore.

Not that Kara thought they would’ve been together much at work, anyway – Cat would be too worried about the implications of it, of people accusing them of unprofessionalism, or of Kara only having gotten a promotion because she was sleeping with the boss.

She had noticed a few whispers, a few curious glances, but no-one had ever been brave enough to actually _ask_ her what was going on.

Until now, anyway.

“What… what happened? You two were so good together.”

“I don’t really want to talk about it.” Kara’s voice was a little cold, and the woman’s eyes widened slightly at Kara’s tone, but she had no idea what to say, and couldn’t see Cat being happy if she found out Kara had been indulging in idle gossip whilst she was supposed to be working.

“That’s fair enough, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to pry.” At least she looked apologetic. “I’m assuming this means you won’t be needing a ticket to tonight’s gala?”

“I…” Kara considered asking _what_ gala, but that would probably make her look like a crazy person. The question made her wonder if she was speaking to Cat’s new assistant (that probably wasn’t new at all), because she couldn’t think of a reason why anyone else would need to know, and at least that might explain why she knew so much. “I don’t think Cat will want me there,” she settled on, and the woman nodded. “I should probably get back to work.” She felt uncomfortable, talking about Cat with someone she didn’t even know (with someone who probably knew _her_ very well), itching with the desire to run away. “I’ll see you around.”

“Bye, Kara.”

The interaction left her rattled, her earlier good mood plummeting as she spent the next hour staring at the blinking cursor on her computer screen, suddenly forgetting how to form words.

It left her frustrated, so she wheeled away from her desk and went for a walk in an attempt to clear her head, stalking down the hall like something was chasing her, and nearly slamming straight into Cat, who was exiting the office of James’ replacement as Kara was striding past it.

“Oh, sorry.” It took Kara a moment to process that it was Cat standing in-front of her, was already reaching out to steady the other woman before she realised who it was and quickly snatched her hand back before it made contact with Cat’s waist.

Cat, too, took a moment, her mouth half-open and a glare fixed on her face and clearly about to snap at whoever had nearly knocked her off her feet before recognising Kara. “Where’s the fire?” Cat asked, and god, she looked good, the pencil skirt hugging her hips, and she was wearing a black blazer with the sleeves rolled up, looking better than anyone had any right to. “Or is it a super emergency?”

“Neither.” They weren’t in the main bullpen, but they were in view of it, and Kara noticed a few people looking their way, no doubt curious what was going on between the two of them. “I just… needed a break.”

“Haven’t you only been back for…” Cat paused to glance at her watch. “Three hours?” Cat asked, arching a perfectly sculpted brow, and Kara had _missed_ this, missed _her_ , hadn’t realised how much until she had Cat back in her life.

“It’s been a long day?” Kara suggested, and Cat’s lips quirked up in the hint of a smile.

“Well, I’m glad you’re feeling better.”

“How, um, how are _you_ feeling?” Kara hadn’t known how to reply to Cat’s text last night, had just sent a simple thank you even though she was desperate to say more, to talk to her more, but she hadn’t wanted to push, and had left it when she’d received no response.

“Ms Grant?” A voice called out to Cat before she could answer, and when Kara glanced over Cat’s shoulder she found the woman from the breakroom hovering at the end of the hallway, an apologetic look on her face. “Sorry to interrupt, but you have a phonecall.”

“Thank you, Jenny,” Cat replied, and at least now Kara knew her name, and had been right about who she was. “Duty calls,” Cat murmured to Kara, looking reluctant to leave, and Kara knew how she felt. “I… maybe we could talk? Later?” Cat asked, and Kara felt her heart start to hammer in her chest, so loud she could hear it in her ears.

“I’d like that. After your gala?” It’d be late, but Kara got the feeling that this wasn’t a conversation they should be having in Cat’s office.

“How do you know about that?”

“Your assistant – or I’m assuming she’s your assistant, anyway – mentioned it before. Asked me if I wanted a ticket.”

“She didn’t.” Cat looked appalled, turning with a frown to look behind her, but Jenny had already disappeared. “I assume you declined?”

“Didn’t want to make it awkward,” Kara shrugged. “But… I would go if you wanted me to?” She’d love to spend the evening with Cat, but she knew that, considering all eyes would probably be on them, it probably wasn’t the ideal setting when things were still so uncertain between them.

“I… I don’t think that would be wise,” Cat replied, after careful consideration. “If we went together, people would expect us to act a… certain way, and I wouldn’t want to make you uncomfortable.”

Kara had figured as much, and wasn’t offended by the answer – it would be difficult for both of them, if they had to act like a couple, _especially_ in-front of an audience.

“But if you came after,” Cat continued, “I’d like that. Land on my balcony?”

“Is there a problem with your front door?”

“I… I haven’t told Carter about what you said the other night,” Cat explained, and Kara supposed that made sense. “I don’t want him to know until… well, until there’s something concrete to tell him.”

“Got it,” Kara nodded, “balcony it is – let me know when you’re home?”

“I will.” Cat looked reluctant to leave, to return to the realities of being CEO, but with one last smile she turned on her heel and walked down the hall, and Kara desperately tried not to allow her eyes to fall to the sway of Cat’s hips as she watched her walk away.

Well, she still felt out of sorts, but now it was for an entirely different reason. She felt nervous, butterflies erupting in her stomach as she thought about the prospect of seeing Cat later that night. She must want to talk about the other day, about what the future might hold for them, and Kara felt sick with uncertainty, with no idea what Cat had decided.

Did she want to try again? Or was she gearing up to let Kara down gently?

She just didn’t know, and she was going to be agonising over the possibilities for the rest of the day.

//

She got very little work done, her mind too busy thinking about other things, and she was relieved when the clock hit five and she was free to go. She did a few laps of the city, desperate to burn off some of her excess energy, before she went to pester Alex at the DEO, hoping her sister might have something to keep her occupied. 

“Kara, what is the _matter_ with you?” Alex asked, reaching out a hand to press it against Kara’s thigh in an attempt to stop her leg from shaking. “Have you been drinking the alien equivalent of red bull?”

“I’m just bored.”

“Uh, I have _seen_ you bored, and this is not it. This is something more.” Alex settled a hand on her hip and turned away from the command centre screens to face her sister, studying her face closely. “Did something happen at work?”

“I… I’m going to Cat’s later.” Kara had debated how much to tell Alex, or even to tell her at all, but she’d never been very good at keeping secrets from her sister. “To talk.”

“About?”

“I dunno,” Kara shrugged and leant back against the wall. “Us? Whatever she wants to talk about.”

“Okay, now I understand why you’re all squirrelly. Are you okay?”

“Not really.” Kara scuffed her boot across the floor, biting down on her bottom lip. “I just don’t know what I’ll do if she says she can’t do this again.”

She’d understand it, of course she would, but she didn’t know how she’d get over it.

“There’s no point worrying about that until you actually talk to her, though,” Alex said, voice reassuring. “And luckily for you,” she said, as one of the screens started beeping, “there’s some kind of disturbance downtown that should keep you occupied for a little while.”

Kara was already taking off before Alex had finished speaking.

The disturbance turned out to be yet another metahuman, this one with powers. Kara had to be careful to dodge the blows of literal fire he rained on her, steering innocent bystanders out of the way and putting out more than one fire with her freeze breath before she managed to wrangle him under control and slap a pair of power-dampening cuffs, courtesy of Star Labs, on his wrists and whisking him into a cell at the DEO.

“You smell slightly singed,” Alex said when Kara returned to the command room, nose scrunching up as Kara stopped beside her. “You didn’t catch fire, did you?”

“Almost.” It was a miracle she still had all of her hair. “But - ” She paused as her phone buzzed in her pocket, scrambling for it, and was sure her face fell when she saw that it was a message from Nia, and not Cat.

“ _Wow_.” Alex looked at Kara in disbelief. “What the hell was that? You’re like a teenage girl with her first crush.”

“Shut up.” Kara threw a pen towards Alex, but she caught it with ease and slipped it into her pocket. “And you can’t talk, anyway – I saw how you were around Maggie in the beginning.”

Alex made a face, but that stopped her teasing, at least.

It was another couple of hours before Cat texted her, long after Kara had disappeared into the training room, taking out some of her frustrations on a reinforced punching bag. As soon as she read that Cat was home, she took off, landing on Cat’s balcony just a few minutes later and tapping gently on the glass door that led into her bedroom.

“That was… very fast,” Cat said as she approached the door, her voice quiet but still audible to Kara through the thin glass.

“Sorry.” Kara’s voice was sheepish as she ducked her head as Cat pulled the door open. “I just - ” Words failed her as she glanced up and took in the sight of Cat for the first time, because she obviously hadn’t had a chance to change since the gala and oh, _oh_ , she was the most beautiful thing that Kara had ever seen.

The dress was a deep purple, strapless to show off Cat’s delicate shoulders and the deep lines of her collarbones, and such an expanse of smooth, pale skin made Kara’s mouth dry. Cat’s hair was still perfectly styled, her lips painted a deep red, and Kara struggled to remember what she’d been going to say as Cat tilted her head to meet Kara’s gaze.

“Kara?” Cat’s eyebrows creased into a frown as she wrapped a hand around the doorframe to steady her as she kicked off her heels – it made her lose a couple of inches, their height difference becoming more pronounced, and it made Kara smile. “Are you alright?”

“Sorry,” Kara apologised again, shaking her head in an attempt to clear it. “You just… you look nice.” It was an understatement, but Kara was terrified of saying too much.

“Oh.” Cat glanced down at herself, smoothing the dress over her hips. “I was going to change before you got here, but…”

“You weren’t expecting me yet,” Kara said wryly. “You can change if you want – that dress is amazing, but probably not the most comfortable. I’ll just wait out here.”

She turned her back when Cat hesitated, stepping towards the balcony edge and resting her hands on the railing, glancing down at the city below and trying not to listen to the sound of Cat unzipping her dress, of the material sliding over silken skin.

She tried not to imagine what Cat might be wearing beneath it – probably not a bra, and considering how tight it had been against her hips, maybe not any underwear, either, and oh, Rao, if Kara kept thinking like that then she was definitely going to pass out.

When the door slid back open, Cat had changed into sweats and an oversized t-shirt, and to Kara, she looked just as good when she was dressed down, the pants sitting low on her hips as she folded her arms across her chest and joined her at the railing.

“How was the gala?” Kara asked, because it was an easier question to ask than any of the others that were on her mind.

“It was fine.” Cat lifted her shoulders in a delicate shrug. “We got a lot of donations, I dodged a lot of questions about your whereabouts, and I managed to sneak away early – why do you smell like burnt toast?”

“Oh, I, uh, had a run-in with a metahuman who could shoot fireballs from his hands.”

“Of _course_ you did.” Cat turned towards her, eyes scanning across her body like she was checking for damage. “You made it out unscathed?”

“I did.”

“Good.” Cat nodded to herself before turning back toward the city skyline, tapping her fingers absentmindedly on the balcony railing, the only outward sign that she gave that she might be nervous. “Kara, I… did you _really_ mean what you said the other night?”

“Yes.” Kara answered without hesitation, because that was one thing she was certain of. “I meant everything that I said.” She watched Cat purse her lips, could sense the doubt radiating from the other woman and reached out, with fingers that were shaking, to settle a hand on Cat’s hip – she jumped, but didn’t move away, and Kara took that as a positive sign. “Cat, look at me.”

She turned so that they were facing, only a few inches separating them. Kara could feel the heat radiating from Cat and, as she looked up at Kara through her lashes, Kara forgot how to breathe. Beneath her hand, still curved around the sharp outline of Cat’s hip, she could feel Cat trembling, ached to draw her closer, to never let her go.

“I meant _everything_.” Slowly, giving Cat time to move away, she raised her other hand and curled it around Cat’s cheek; she closed her eyes and leant into the touch, and Kara couldn’t resist stroking her thumb across Cat’s skin. “And I can’t imagine how hard that is for you to believe, after everything, but I… I’d love it if you could give me a chance to prove it to you. Ever since the reset, I haven’t been able to think about anything other than you, wishing that I had all of these memories that you had, wishing that… wishing that I never came back.” Her throat felt tight, and Cat’s eyes flew open. “Because at least you would’ve been happy, with other me.”

“Oh, Kara.” Cat’s voice was soft, anguished, and her hand was wrapped so hard around the balcony railing that her knuckles flashed white, and Kara wondered if she was holding on so tight so that she didn’t reach out and touch her. “You shouldn’t say that. I’m glad you came back.”

“ _Why_?”

“Because that life… it wasn’t real, no matter how much I wish it was. It wasn’t the real you.”

“What if you don’t even like the real me?”

“There is no universe where I wouldn’t fall head over heels for you.” Cat’s voice was filled with such certainty, her eyes shining under the light of the moon, and the desire to kiss her was utterly overwhelming. “And the fact that you don’t believe me only makes me fall even more.”

“What… what does this mean?” Kara asked, her voice small as she asked the question that hadn’t been far from her mind all day. “For us?”

“Honestly? I don’t know,” Cat answered. “But I _do_ know that I… I don’t want to live a life without you in it. The past few days have been torture, and I _miss_ you. I have no idea what the future holds for us, or if in this life we’re even compatible, if things will work out when I remember so much and you don’t remember anything, but… I think I’d like to make new memories, together. You seem so adamant that you’re a different Kara to the one I knew, so maybe you won’t be the only one playing catch-up. We can get to know one another again, and… just see how things go.”

“Really?”

“If you want to.”

“Oh, Cat, I’ve never wanted anything more,” Kara breathed, eyes stinging with tears. “I… I know we should probably take things slow, but I really want to kiss you.”

Cat just looked so beautiful, and she was so _close_ , her perfume permeating the air, and she didn’t know how she’d survive if she didn’t get to taste those red, red lips before the night was over.

“We _should_ take it slow,” Cat murmured, and Kara tried not to let her disappointment show on her face, “but then, I’ve never had very good self-control when it came to you,” she added, and then she was sliding a hand around the back of Kara’s neck and surging up on her toes to bring their lips together.

It was chaste, barely a peck, but Kara knew she wouldn’t want to push too hard, would want to follow Kara’s lead, and Kara was only too happy for that to happen – she pulled Cat closer, until there was no space between them, one hand settling on the small of Cat’s back and the other threading through her hair as she brushed their lips together again.

Kissing Cat was both everything and nothing like she’d imagined, and the reality was so much better than any of her daydreams, because this was _real_ , Cat warm and soft beneath her fingertips, and the tiny moan Cat let out when Kara slid her tongue into her mouth nearly made her knees buckle.

She was sure she could spend a lifetime doing this and never grow tired, Cat kissing her back with something like desperation, like she wasn’t sure when she’d next get the chance, like she wasn’t sure she’d ever get to kiss Kara again, but Kara would be content to kiss her like this for the rest of her goddamn life.

When they parted, they were both breathing heavily, and Kara rested her forehead against Cat’s, closing her eyes, content to just breathe her in.

“I don’t want to go,” Kara murmured, running a hand along Cat’s side when she shivered, and Kara wondered if she was cold, standing in the cool night air.

“So don’t,” Cat replied. “Stay the night.”

“S-stay?” Kara’s eyebrows raised in alarm. “The night? W-with you?”

“Well, not if it’ll give you an aneurysm, no.” Cat looked amused. “You _can_ say no – I won’t be offended."

“No, no,” Kara was hasty to reassure Cat that that wasn’t the case – far from it. “You just caught me off-guard. And you make me very nervous.”

“Do I?” Cat lifted a sculpted brow, lips curving into a wicked smile. “How so?”

“Because… well, because you’re Cat Grant and you’re very confident and very hot and very, very sexy and you just invited me to spend the night in your bed and you’re a _really_ good kisser – how could I _not_ be nervous?”

“I love it when you ramble.” Cat’s eyes were sparkling, and this was a side of her that Kara had never seen before – she looked happy, free, almost, and Kara felt privileged that Cat was allowing Kara to see it. “But you don’t need to be nervous.”

“What about Carter?” Kara very much wanted to stay, but not if it came at the expense of Cat’s son. “I don’t want him to find me in your room, especially if you haven’t talked to him about us yet.”

“He won’t,” Cat assured her. “He has a robotics class every Saturday morning – he leaves early, and by now he’s used to me not being up to see him off. So, what do you say, Supergirl? Are you kissing me goodbye, or coming inside?”

The answer was easy, and Kara let Cat take her hand and pull her through the open door. The room was dark, but she could still see well enough, allowed herself to take in the room in a way that she’d hadn’t let herself last time she’d been in there. It was very Cat, minimalist but homely, the walls a light grey and the bedsheets charcoal.

Kara’s stomach was in knots, but it was with excitement rather than fear, and she perched on the end of the bed as Cat fetched her a pair of pyjamas to change into, waving the other woman into the bathroom ahead of her, knowing she could be ready for bed in record time.

_I’m staying here, so don’t expect me home,_ Kara texted her sister, because she knew Alex was probably waiting up for her, even though Kara had told her not to, and she’d only worry that something had gone wrong if Kara didn’t let her know what was happening.

_WHAT?!?!?!?!_ Alex replied, and Kara rolled her eyes at the response, another text coming through a few seconds later. _I assume it went well, then?_

_Very :D_

_I won’t pester you for details now, but I want them when you get home._

_I expect nothing less._

Kara slipped her phone back in her pocket as the bathroom door opened, and Kara swallowed, hard, at the sight of Cat in a pair of tiny shorts, her legs looking endless, and a tank top that was sinfully tight, and Rao, she was definitely trying to kill her.

“Everything alright?”

“Everything’s amazing,” Kara answered, and she couldn’t help but step close to Cat as she passed her to use the bathroom, pressing a kiss to her lips as she went.

When she returned to the bedroom, Cat was already under the covers, and Kara was quick to join her, climbing into the bed and wiggling closer to Cat until they were pressed together. Last time she’d been in bed with Cat, she’d been in too much shock to be able to enjoy it, but this time, she was determined to soak it in, to live in the moment, because if the past few months had taught her anything, it was that life was too short, and perfect nights should never be wasted.


	8. Chapter 8

Cat woke up with the sunrise, feeling well-rested despite the fact that, after spending hours talking to or kissing Kara, she hadn’t managed to get much sleep.

It was the first night since the reset that she hadn’t been haunted by nightmares, and she knew that that had everything to do with the woman that was still sleeping beside her. Kara slept the same as she had in Cat’s memories, curled up on her side, with an arm slung across Cat’s waist, mouth close to the back of Cat’s neck, her soft, even breaths stirring strands of Cat’s hair.

She shifted, rolling onto her back and turning her head so that she could drink Kara in. She was bathed in the golden hues of the sun, her face smooth and at peace, and Cat had always thought she was beautiful but never more so than when she was like this, eyes closed and deep in sleep, trusting Cat to see her at her most vulnerable.

Cat was almost tempted to pinch herself to check that this was real, that she wasn’t really dreaming, that Kara coming to see her last night hadn’t just been part of one big fantasy.

It hadn’t been easy for Cat to open herself up, to let Kara in again, but ever since her conversation with Kara the other day, she’d known there was really only one outcome – she loved Kara Danvers with every fibre of her being, and if there was a chance, even only a small one, that they could be together… Cat would give anything to be able to take it.

And it might not be easy, considering their very unique circumstances, but love rarely was, and Cat knew that with Kara, it was worth fighting for, refused to dwell on the possibility of it not working, vowed to be more positive, moving forward, because she didn’t want her negativity to be the reason they didn’t work.

She’d thought that, when they were together, she’d only ever be able to see the Kara that she’d used to know so well, but Kara was right – the woman Cat had been with and the one lying beside her weren’t the same person. They had different experiences, had lived different lives, with different people, and Cat couldn’t wait to get to know this version of Kara just as well, wanted to learn everything about her, everything that had happened to her in the last three years.

Cat could lie there for a lifetime, trying to memorise the planes of Kara’s face, but she could really use a shower, and then she should probably make a start on breakfast, because she knew that Kara would be ravenous the second that she woke up, and trying to feed an alien and a growing teenage boy had been no mean feat for the past few years of Cat’s life – not that she was complaining about having to do it all over again.

Shuffling towards the edge of the bed, she smiled when Kara’s arm tightened around her waist, trying to drag her back, and oh, Cat would never be over Kara’s displays of raw strength, at the delicious muscles that hid beneath that oh so soft skin.

“Don’t go,” Kara murmured, her words muffled by the pillow, and her eyes still closed.

“I need a shower – I’d say you could join me, but I wouldn’t want to give you a heart attack.” Although it _had_ been amusing to see Kara’s wide-eyed alarm when Cat had asked her to spend the night.

“Could just use my x-ray vision to watch from here,” Kara suggested, her voice rough with sleep, low enough to make Cat’s stomach twist.

“Want me to put on a show?” Cat asked, her own voice husky, and _that_ had Kara’s eyes fluttering open – when they met Cat’s, they were dark, and Cat’s self-control was already fragile when it came to Kara, but if she was going to look at her like _that_ , she didn’t stand any chance at all.

“Not unless you want to kill me,” Kara murmured, and Cat grinned.

“Go back to sleep,” Cat told her, before leaning down to press a kiss to her forehead. “And I’ll bring you breakfast in bed. Do you want eggs?”

“Okay.” Kara’s eyes were already closing, and Cat knew she’d be fast asleep when she returned from the bathroom – the girl could be unconscious in less than five seconds, a skill that Cat would forever envy.

Sure enough, when Cat emerged from the bathroom in a cloud of steam, wrapped in a fluffy robe with damp hair curling around her shoulders, Kara was already gone, and Cat shook her head as she made her way to the kitchen.

Carter wouldn’t be back for another two hours, which meant she and Kara could spend a little longer in bed before she had to slip away. Cat would talk to him later that day, now that she knew something more concrete about the state of her and Kara’s relationship – and honestly, he’d probably know anyway, because her mood was already starting to lift, and there was no way he wouldn’t notice.

She only had six eggs left, which probably wouldn’t be enough to keep Kara going until lunch, but at least it was better than nothing, and she started cracking them as she waited for the pan to heat on the stove.

She was just about to pour in the eggs when she heard the front door click open, and Cat frowned, because Carter should be at his class, and she was going to have to post Kara out of the window again – but when she turned towards the front door, it wasn’t Carter standing there at all.

It was her _mother_.

Cat had honestly forgotten that the woman even had a key, it had been so long since she’d forced her way into Cat’s life. She hadn’t taken Cat’s relationship with Kara well, and the vitriol they’d both spat at one another had been enough to ensure that they hadn’t spoken since the day that Katherine had found out, and Cat couldn’t, for the life of her, fathom why her mother would choose to visit her daughter unannounced early on a Saturday morning.

“I see you finally came to your senses,” Katherine said, like that was supposed to explain _anything_ , and Cat could only stare at her, astonished.

“What on _earth_ are you doing here?” She was caught completely off-guard, felt weirdly exposed, in just her pyjamas and a gown, when her mother was as perfectly prim and coifed as ever, and she folded her arms across her chest, straightening her back as she tilted her chin to glare at Katherine.

“I came to see if you were alright,” Katherine sniffed, and Cat scoffed, because her mother had never given a shit about her feelings in any of her fifty-four years of life. “Such a public breakup can be difficult - ”

“What are you talking about?” Cat’s confusion was only growing, and Katherine heaved a dramatic sigh as she reached up to fiddle with her glasses.

“Don’t tell me you’re in denial, Kitty.” She sounded as condescending as ever, and Cat bristled at the hated nickname. “It’s all over the news – your midlife crisis left you. There’s no way you’d allow her to miss one of your little events if she hadn’t. The host should never turn up alone.”

_Oh._

Of course – the gala.

Kara had been by her side at every single public event since they’d gotten together, even if she could only stop by briefly due to her extracurricular activities, a fact that hadn’t gone unnoticed by last night’s attendees. Cat had brushed off any questions, but she was sure that had just aroused more suspicion, and all it would take was one ‘source’ spilling that they hadn’t been seen interacting for the past couple of weeks and the media would have a field day.

She hadn’t checked the news, been too preoccupied with the woman sleeping peacefully in her bed, but she was sure that her name would feature heavily in the gossip section – and it had led her mother to come here, because she wanted to rub it in.

Cat was flooded with such outrage that it was a miracle she didn’t lunge across the counter to wrap her hands around her mother’s throat.

“Cat?”

Before she had a chance to open her mouth and eviscerate her mother, Kara’s voice called out from down the hall, obviously having been roused from her slumber by the sound of voices, and Cat wondered if she had any idea what she was about to walk into.

But of course, she had superhearing, and Cat knew she must have overheard everything that Katherine had said, because as she came around the corner, Cat noticed that she’d changed out of the pyjamas that Cat had given her last night.

The shorts were gone, and in their place was a pair of black lace panties that made Cat’s mouth dry, and the white tank she was wearing was clearly one of Cat’s, because it was too short for her, clinging to her skin, almost see-through in a way that made it perfectly obvious that she wasn’t wearing a bra.

“Oh!” Kara feigned surprise well when she came face-to-face with Katherine Grant, pressing a hand to her chest like she was shocked, like she had no idea who she was about to find. “Sorry, didn’t see you there.”

Katherine looked absolutely scandalised, and Cat wished she had her phone handy, because she’d love to capture the look on her mother’s face, knew it would never fail to cheer her up when she was having a bad day.

“Are the eggs nearly ready, babe?” Kara ignored Katherine as she stepped past her and into the kitchen, wrapping an arm around Cat’s waist to pull her close. “I’m starving – you really wore me out last night.” She said that last part quietly, like she was trying to be discrete, but she made sure it was still loud enough for Katherine to overhear, and she let out a horrified squeak in response.

“Not quite – I had an unexpected visitor to contend with.” Cat started to relax, a little, with Kara’s arms around her, the other woman having a calming effect, but Cat still felt on edge as she eyed her mother closely. “As you can see, mother, Kara and I are still going strong – sorry to disappoint you. If you’d have called, I’d have saved you the journey – maybe you should stop reading those gossip columns you claim to hate so much.”

Katherine’s face turned a delightful shade of purple, and Cat tried not to let too much of her glee show on her face as she turned and flounced off without saying another word, and Cat had to count that as a victory.

“God, you’re amazing,” Cat murmured, turning in Kara’s arms to face her. “Thank you for rescuing me.”

“No problem. I, um, should probably go and put on some more clothes.”

“You don’t _have_ to.” Honestly, it should be a crime to keep yourself all covered up when you looked like a Greek goddess, and Kara’s blush was adorable. “You can just take my robe if you want,” Cat suggested, because she’d never been shy, and she didn’t want Kara to be uncomfortable, was only too happy to shrug out of it and hand it over when the other woman nodded. “Now, let me make you breakfast – you more than deserve it, after scaring my mother away.”

“I can’t believe she came over here like that.”

“Oh, I can.” Cat turned her back to Kara, attention turning back to her eggs. “She _hated_ you and I being together. She couldn’t stand the fact that I was interested in women, was happy that I never had a public relationship with one, and then…” Cat trailed off to glance at Kara over her shoulder. “Then you came along, and not only were you a woman, you were also many years my junior, and my former assistant to boot.”

“I’m sure she took it really well.”

“Oh, delightfully well. She had some choice words for the both of us, and when I told her I didn’t give a flying fuck what she thought about us, and of course I wasn’t going to break up with you just because she told me so, she stormed off and we hadn’t spoken since. Until today, anyway.”

“So you’re only worth the time of day when you’re not in a relationship with a woman?”

“That sums her up perfectly, yes.”

“What an asshole.”

Cat chuckled at Kara’s assessment, because she knew it was rare for the woman to say something bad about someone, and even rarer for her to curse.

“I’m sorry you had to grow up like that.”

“Well, I turned out mostly alright,” Cat shrugged – her childhood had been awful, but it was in the past, now, and she knew it had turned her into the woman she was today.

“More than alright,” Kara replied, and Cat’s smile was soft.

They ate breakfast together at the kitchen counter, before reluctantly going their separate ways, Kara going back to her sister’s apartment and Cat awaiting Carter’s return. She was in her study when he arrived, replying to some emails she’d neglected the previous night when she’d been getting ready for the gala.

“Hey, Mom,” he greeted her, peering around the doorway, and she waved him inside. “How was the gala?”

She knew what he was really asking – were you alright without Kara there? He knew she hated events like that, and had even offered to go with her, bless his heart, but she knew that being in the spotlight around so many unfamiliar people would have been hell on earth for him.

“It was fine, sweetheart. How was your night in?”

“Alright,” he shrugged. “Just played some games.”

“And your class this morning?”

“It was good. We came up with an idea for the competition in the summer. I actually…” Carter paused, worrying at his bottom lip, and Cat waited patiently for him to finish his thought. “I, um, was thinking about asking Alex for her opinion on it. Do you think… do you think she’d mind?”

“Oh, Carter, of course she wouldn’t mind. In fact, I think she’d like that.”

“Really?”

“Mm.” She knew that he missed Alex, that the two of them had had a bond not unlike the one that he had used to share with Kara. “Do you want me to call her and ask her?”

He nodded, so she reached for her phone, knowing that Alex’s number was still stored in there somewhere.

“Hello?” She picked up after just three rings, sounding confused. “If you’re looking for Kara, she had to go take care of something.”

So, Kara had already spoken to Alex about everything that had happened last night – not that Cat expected anything less, knowing how close the two of them were.

“Uh, no, actually, I wanted to talk to you.” Cat noticed Carter eyeing her curiously, and cleared her throat. “Well, actually, Carter wanted to ask you something about his robotics class. I think he wants to pick your brain.”

“Oh yeah?” Alex had that interested lilt to her words that Cat was all-too-used to hearing when the two of them had put their heads together on Carter’s latest project. “I’m free this afternoon, if you guys don’t have plans? I know for a fact that Kara would jump at the chance to see you again, considering she hasn’t shut up about you since she got home.” Alex sounded fond, rather than disgruntled as the words might suggest, and Cat’s lips twitched.

“Let me just check with Carter,” Cat said into the phone, before lifting it away from her cheek. “She’s free this afternoon if you want to work on it then?”

“Okay.” His eyes brightened in a way Cat hadn’t seen for a while. “I’ll go and start writing everything down – thanks Mom!” He sped off without another word, and Cat shook her head as she watched him go.

“That was a resounding yes,” Cat said to Alex, and she heard the other woman chuckle on the other end of the line. “You can come over here if you like? You’re welcome to stay for tea. Kara, too, if she wants to – I know she might feel awkward around Carter.” She couldn’t imagine just _how_ awkward – Kara had meant so much to Carter, but Kara barely knew him at all. “Tell her I won’t be offended if she doesn’t want to come.”

“Will do,” Alex assured her. “But I’ll definitely be there – around four okay?”

“Four is fine.”

“Then I’ll see you then.”

Cat hung up and went back to work, only leaving her office when her stomach started rumbling, reminding her to eat lunch. On her way to the kitchen, she went to Carter’s room, knocking on the door and finding him sitting at his desk inside, scribbling away in one of his notebooks.

“Want something to eat, sweetheart?”

“Yes please. Can I have a grilled cheese?” It was one of his favourite foods, and Cat had quickly become a master of making them.

“Of course you can.”

She threw together a salad for herself while it was cooking, and took them both down to his room, setting his plate down beside him and curling up on the armchair in the corner to pick at her own food.

“Alex is coming over at four,” she told him, because he’d run off before she’d had a chance to tell him before. “And Kara is going to come, too.” She’d had a text from the other woman telling her so, and her desire to see Cat again must have outweighed her anxiety at seeing Carter.

“She is?” Carter spun his desk chair around to face her, frowning. “Why?”

“I… I told you that she and I spoke, the other day, when you let her up here, but I never told you what we talked about.” Cat hadn’t really planned out what she was going to say to him, she just knew that he deserved to know what was going on. “She told me that… that she used to have feelings for me, back when she was my assistant. And she said that the two of us could be together in this life, our life, like we were in the alternate timeline, if I was willing to try.”

She kept her eyes on her fork, chasing a crouton around her bowl, to avoid the scrutiny of her son’s gaze. “She gave me some time to think it over, and I have been, and last night I asked if I could meet up with her.”

“You’re back together?” Carter asked, the words slow, and his frown, when Cat glanced at his face, had deepened.

“We’re… taking things slow.” Although spending the night together probably didn’t count as slow in the eyes of many. “But we’re going to try and make another go of things, yes.” She watched as Carter absorbed that information. “And I want you to know that you are still my number one priority, and you always will be, and if this makes you uncomfortable in any way, then we can dial it back.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Carter answered without hesitation. “Kara made you happy, and she made me happy, too, and I want you to have that again. I just… I don’t want you to get hurt again.”

“I don’t want that either,” Cat murmured. “And honestly, that’s the reason it took me so long so think it over, but I… I can’t let fear ruin another chance with her.”

“That makes sense,” Carter nodded, looking thoughtful. “And I don’t want you to think that I’m not happy for you, because I am, Mom. All I want is for you to be happy, and I know you are whenever you’re with her. I’ve noticed you look a little brighter these past couple of days.” He flashed her a warm smile.

“She’d like to build a relationship with you, too, if you’d be open to that.” It was one of the things that they’d talked about last night, Kara aware of Carter’s importance in Cat’s life, and knowing that the two of them were a package deal.

“I’d like that.” Carter’s voice was soft, and Cat knew that he’d been missing Kara almost as much as Cat had been, these past few weeks. “Is it weird?” He asked, then. “When you remember everything, but she doesn’t?”

“It is, but… not as much as I thought it would be.” Last night, she’d been too busy living in the moment to dwell on her other memories, and this first kiss with Kara was just as, if not even more, special than the last.

“And she’s definitely coming later?”

“Barring any emergencies, yes.”

“Okay.” He nodded to himself, and Cat could see him eyeing up his notebook, so she left him to it, returning to her own office and knowing that the next few hours were going to crawl by, because all she’d be able to think about was seeing Kara again.

It had only been a few hours since Cat had seen her, but she already missed her, and she was in so, so deep but it didn’t scare her.

Usually, she hid her emotions, was terrified of showing too much, of making herself too vulnerable, afraid of getting burned. It made her guarded and standoffish, and she had been like that with Kara in the beginning in their other life, but now there was no need for her to hide, because Kara already knew exactly how she felt, already knew that Cat loved her, and instead of running for the hills, she’d pulled Cat close and kissed her senseless.

It was freeing, in a way, and she knew it could still go downhill, that they were still very much in the honeymoon phase, and Kara might never feel the same way, but for now, things were perfect, and Cat was determined to enjoy it for however long it lasted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you guys are enjoying the fluff!
> 
> This is the last chapter I currently have fully written, and I'm looking at wrapping it up within the next couple of chapters. So with that in mind, I wanted to ask you guys if there were any scenes you'd like to see before that happens - either drop it in a comment or a message on tumblr and I'll try and incorporate some of them if I can!


	9. Chapter 9

Kara bounced nervously on the balls of her feet as Alex knocked on the door of Cat’s apartment, stopping only when Alex set a hand on her shoulder and tried to hold her down.

“Will you _stop_ it?” Alex asked, as Kara just shrugged her off. “You don’t have anything to worry about.”

“Uh, yes, I do.” Not with Cat – things there were good, thankfully, but she was about to spend the evening with Carter and that filled her with all kinds of apprehension. “What do we even talk about? Did we have anything in common? Did - ” She cut herself off when the front door opened, Cat standing in the doorway wearing a baggy sweatshirt, black jeans and a soft smile. “Hey. You, um, you look nice.”

“Real smooth, Kara,” Alex muttered, and Kara elbowed her in the side so hard she swore.

“Hi.” Cat’s lips twitched in amusement as she looked between the two of them. “It’s nice to see you again, Alex. Come on in.” Cat stepped aside and waved them by, and Kara let Alex go ahead of her so that she could stop to press a quick kiss to Cat’s lips as she passed.

“Where’s my little man?” Alex asked, shrugging out of her jacket and boots and padding inside the apartment like she’d been there a hundred times before – which, Kara supposed, she probably had.

“He’s in his room,” Cat answered, taking Kara’s hand and pulling her along as she followed Alex deeper into her home. “I don’t think he’s looked away from his notebook all morning – he’s very excited.”

“I’ll go and see what he’s working on.” Alex disappeared down the hall, and Kara waited until she heard a door open and close before pulling Cat into her arms, ducking her head to kiss her soundly, sighing as Cat’s arms wound around her neck, lips parting for Kara’s tongue, loving that she could do that now, she could kiss Cat whenever she wanted, and her life for the past twenty-four hours had felt like a waking dream.

They were interrupted by a beeping coming from the kitchen, and Cat pulled away a little reluctantly, Kara pouting as Cat slipped out of her grasp.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Cat said, laughing as she walked over to the kitchen, and Kara stopped pouting when Cat bent to peer inside the oven, because the view of her ass in those jeans?

A masterpiece.

“Or like _that_ ,” Cat added, when she turned back around and caught Kara staring, and Kara’s cheeks burned as she ducked her head, but she wasn’t even sorry because did Cat have any idea how gorgeous she was? “Not unless you want me to drag you down the hall, anyway.”

“Somehow, I don’t think Carter or Alex would appreciate that,” Kara said with a smile, though the offer was tempting. “What are you making?” She leant a hip against the kitchen counter beside the sink as she watched Cat reset the timer.

“Chicken parmigiana.”

“Ooh, that’s one of my favourites,” Kara said, and Cat just shot her a look over her shoulder. “Which you obviously already knew.”

“I would’ve made you potstickers, but my many attempts in the past have been unsuccessful.” Cat looked like she took that as a personal offence, and Kara wondered how many times she’d tried, how many times Kara had pretended to eat them.

“Okay, I’m at a definite disadvantage here,” Kara decided. “You already know all of my favourite things, but I don’t know yours.”

“ _You’re_ the one who keeps insisting that we’re on equal footing because you’re a different person now,” Cat pointed out, leaning up on her toes to grab a wine glass from the cupboard. “And it’s not like I’m a stranger to you – we worked together for three years.”

“Yeah, but all that time you were pretending you were an ice queen and that you didn’t have a favourite anything.”

“I had a favourite assistant.”

“You had a very interesting way of showing it,” Kara said, and Cat smirked as she poured herself a glass of red wine. “But I’m serious, I want to know everything about you.”

“You can’t learn everything in one day, Kara.” Cat looked so relaxed, sipping from her glass, one hip pressed against the counter, her eyes open and unguarded as they looked up at Kara, her face lit up by the orange rays of the setting sun. “It’s going to take time, and that’s okay.”

“Patience isn’t one of my strong suits.”

“I know.” Cat moved closer, like she couldn’t stand being near to Kara but not touch her, and Kara wrapped her arms around Cat’s waist, pressing her front against Cat’s back and resting her chin on the other woman’s shoulder. “For the record, I don’t really have a favourite food,” Cat said, toying with Kara’s fingers. “I like a lot of different things – sushi, even though it makes you scrunch up your face like that.” Cat glanced at Kara over her shoulder, smiling at her expression. “You already know a salad with a cheeseburger on top is a staple when I’m having a particularly stressful day. I like lasagne, because it reminds me of my father.”

“I’ve never heard you talk about him before.”

“I don’t tend to all that often – you know all too well that while you may heal over time, the loss of a parent you loved doesn’t ever truly go away.”

“You were young when you lost him?”

“I was ten,” Cat confirmed, and Kara tightened her hold around Cat’s waist, hoping to ease some of the tension that made Cat straighten her spine. “It was sudden. Heart attack.”

“I’m sorry.” Kara pressed a kiss to Cat’s cheek, and she relaxed further into Kara’s touch. “At least I ended up with the Danvers’ when I lost my parents. I dread to think what it was like to go through that with only your mother to comfort you.” Kara shuddered at the mere thought – she doubted that the formidable Katherine Grant had been warmer and cuddlier when Cat had been a child.

“It wasn’t the best,” Cat admitted. “But I soon got shipped off to boarding school so I didn’t have to spend too much time with her after that.”

“Did you prefer that?”

“Mm, it depended on the day. I struggled to fit in at school, it took me a while to find my place.”

“Knowing you as I do now, I find that hard to imagine.” Kara couldn’t comprehend the thought of a Cat Grant who wasn’t sure in who she was, who was hesitant and uncertain. “If I’d have landed on Earth on time, we would’ve been a similar age,” Kara mused, “do you think we’d have been friends if we were in school together?”

“I struggled to fit in, but I don’t know if I’d have befriended the quiet girl who spent all her time in the library.” Cat’s voice was light, teasing, and Kara wasn’t used to seeing her like this but god, she knew it would be so easy to get used to.

“Rude. I was a delight in school.”

“If by delight, you mean nerd,” Alex called, and both Cat and Kara turned to see her coming into the kitchen, Carter trailing a few steps behind, “then you would be correct.”

“I don’t know if I like the two of you ganging up on me,” Kara said, narrowing her eyes as she looked between Cat and her sister. “I get the feeling you used to do that a lot.”

“Oh, only all the time,” Alex said, grinning as she patted Kara on the shoulder. “The kid even joined in sometimes, too.” She glanced towards Carter, who threw Kara a shy smile. “We got thirsty, sorry.”

“That’s quite alright,” Cat said, and Kara let her hands fall down to her side when Cat stepped away. “What can I get you? Glass of wine?”

“Sure.”

“Me too,” Carter piped up, a cheeky grin on his face as Cat levelled him with a glare from across the kitchen counter.

“I don’t think so, young man.”

“It was worth a shot.”

“You won’t be having any shots, either,” Cat said, and Carter stuck out his tongue at her as he went to the fridge to grab a soda. “How is your project coming along?”

“Good.” Alex hopped up onto the kitchen counter, and Carter lent against her legs – Kara watched them closely, amazed at how easily they interacted, and as Alex slung an arm around his shoulders, it warmed Kara’s heart, because Alex had wanted kids for so long and she must’ve thought of Carter as a nephew, in their other life, and Kara was glad that getting their memories back hadn’t seemed to affect their relationship too much. “You’ve definitely got a mini genius on your hands, Cat.”

“Not so mini anymore,” Cat said, looking at her son fondly, but also a little misty-eyed, and Kara wondered if she was thinking about him going off to college soon, of how empty her apartment would seem without him nearby.

“Well, I’m gonna make sure your team wins that competition,” Alex said, ruffling Carter’s hair until he squirmed away from her. “What’s first prize?”

“Summer internship at Google.”

“Holy crap that _is_ a good prize. I’ll get you there, kid.”

“Thanks, Alex.” Carter’s grin was wide, his eyes a whole lot brighter than they had been the last time Kara had seen him. She knew that was all down to her (that his sadness had been all down to her, too), and it was a lot of pressure to have weighing on her shoulders, on this fledging relationship that she and Cat were only just starting to figure out, but somehow, impossibly, it didn’t feel overwhelming.

Instead, she felt a lot like she was coming home.

“Do you think you two can spare an hour to eat?” Cat asked, when the timer beeped once again. “Because food is ready.”

“I think we’ll manage,” Alex said, and she helped Carter set the table while Kara helped Cat plate everything up.

She sat between Cat and Alex, Cat’s foot hooked around her calf like she needed to be touching Kara just to reassure herself that she was real. Kara was content to listen to the others talk, for the most part, Alex catching up with what Cat and Carter had been up to since the timeline reset, Carter talking about his last couple of weeks in school.

He was still shy, kept his eyes on his plate for the most part, but he was more animated than Kara had ever seen him before, and Kara was excited to get to know him, to see how he’d grown and changed from the cheeky thirteen year old she’d looked after all those years ago.

When they’d finished eating, he asked her if she wanted to play Settlers of Catan, his voice hopeful, and Kara was quick to agree. Cat and Alex left them to clean up the dishes, and Kara felt a little less out of her element, curling up on Cat’s floor in-front of her glass coffee table with the board spread out between them.

“Did we used to play this a lot?” She asked, as they started to play, Carter seeming to come alive as he set his first settlement down on the board.

“Yeah. My mom used to work late on Thursdays, so we always used to play games and eat pizza. I think this was your favourite because it was the one you won the most. You were very competitive.”

“Well, that definitely hasn’t changed.”

“Good, cause otherwise this would be no fun,” Carter replied, that cheeky grin back in place, and Kara smiled back at him, some of her earlier nerves starting to slip away.

Cat and Alex joined them halfway through, Cat sitting on the couch behind Kara and Alex spreading herself out on the floor beside Carter. Kara leant back against Cat’s legs and tried not to let her eyes slip shut when Cat started playing with her hair, accepting any tips Cat whispered into her ear.

In the end, Carter won, his face lighting up as he got his last point, and Kara couldn’t even be mad, because she’d never seen him look so happy.

They played Taboo next, teaming up in all the possible combinations to see who was the best pair – Kara and Alex won, narrowly, and much to Kara’s surprise, she and Carter came in second. It was a fun night, and Kara laughed more than she had in a long time. She wondered how many nights they’d spent like this, just the four of them, playing games until they had tears in their eyes, and she hoped that there would be countless others just like this in their future. 

As much as Kara wanted to stay the night, to fall asleep with Cat in her arms for the second night in a row, they were supposed to be taking things slow, feeling things out, and she thought a little time and space would do the both of them some good, so when Alex announced she was going to call it a night, Kara said she’d fly her home.

“I’ll see you at work on Monday?” Kara asked, lingering in Cat’s living room as Alex steered Carter towards the door.

“Of course.” Cat leant up on her toes to press her lips against Kara’s, kissing her soft and slow until her head was spinning, and her resolve to walk out the front door nearly cracked. “Have you had a good night?”

“The best. Have you? It wasn’t too weird?”

“It was a little weird, how similar it felt to old times,” Cat conceded, “but it was a good weird.”

“Good.” Kara couldn’t resist kissing her again, and only pulled away when she heard Alex calling her name from down the hall. She followed in her sister’s footsteps a little reluctantly, Cat’s fingers intertwined with her own, and it was stupid, how she was already starting to miss her.

It was too much, too fast, but it didn’t scare her like she thought it probably should – instead, it felt _right_ in a way she’d never felt in a relationship before. Things with Mon-El had never been plain sailing, never been _easy_ , had been messy and complicated and she’d never felt truly at ease.

Maybe it was destiny, maybe it was simply that Kara was used to being around Cat, to existing in the same space as her even if it had never been romantic before, maybe it was because Cat was relaxed because this was all familiar to her, but whatever it was, it made Cat feel like home, and that was enough for Kara to believe that things between them would work out just fine.

//

There was a spring in Kara’s step when she arrived at CatCo the next morning, a pumpkin spiced latte in one hand and a regular latte in the other as she stepped out of the elevator on the fortieth floor.

Cat was already in her office, sitting behind her desk with her glasses perched on her nose as she frowned at something on her computer screen, and Kara hesitated at the desk that had used to belong to her, all those years ago.

“You can go in,” Jenny said, smiling up at Kara warmly when she noticed her pause. “Did… did you two manage to work things out?”

“Kind of,” Kara decided to answer – she and Cat hadn’t really had the chance to discuss how to frame their relationship to those who hadn’t had their memories restored, but she didn’t think Cat would mind. “We’re just… seeing how things go.”

“Well, I’m glad to hear it. I meant what I said the other day – you guys are good together.”

“Thanks.” It was a weird thing for Kara to hear, all things considered, but she appreciated it, along with another glimpse into the life this other version of her had had.

She knocked lightly on the door before stepping inside Cat’s office, watching as her frown bloomed into a smile when she saw Kara.

“Brought you a latte,” she said, and she lifted up her glasses to give it a warming blast of heat vision before she set the cup on the edge of Cat’s desk.

“You didn’t have to do that.”

“I know, but I was going to Noonan’s anyway,” Kara said with a shrug. “And also I wanted to see you.” She didn’t mind admitting that, didn’t mind laying herself bare, because she knew that nothing she said would scare Cat away.

That was its own kind of refreshing, especially knowing how guarded Cat could be.

“How was the rest of your weekend?” Cat asked, humming as she took a sip of her drink. “God, I’ve missed superheated lattes. My assistants in D.C. could never get it hot enough.”

“It was fine.” Nothing of interest to report, not even a Supergirl-related emergency to keep her mind from wandering to Cat. “And I’m glad to be of service.”

“Do you want to have lunch together later?” Cat asked, the both of them well-aware that Kara was perilously close to being late for her morning briefing. “Around one?”

“I’d love to.” It took all of Kara’s self-control not to lean over Cat’s desk and kiss those inviting lips, but she resigned herself to waiting until later, impatiently counting down the hours until one o’clock, and it was a miracle she managed to write three paragraphs of her latest article with the way her mind kept wandering.

She found Cat on her balcony, unpacking containers of Chinese food from Kara’s favourite restaurant. Kara settled down on the couch beside her, and when Cat handed her a double portion of potstickers, she leant over to kiss her, one hand tangling in soft blonde curls as her tongue licked into Cat’s mouth.

“Mm, what was that for?” Cat asked when they parted, her cheeks flushed and her breathing laboured, and she was so beautiful, illuminated in the golden rays of the midday sun, that Kara could scarcely believe that she was real.

“Does there have to be a reason?”

“I suppose not. I suspect it’s payment for the potstickers, though,” Cat said, smile pulling at the edges of her lips and Kara grinned.

“…Maybe.” Kara sighed happily as she shoved two into her mouth, and Cat watched her with an expression of exasperation that Kara imagined she’d worn a thousand times before. “Have you been busy today?”

“No more so than usual.”

“Is it weird, being back here? With your old memories?” Sometimes, Kara still struggled to wrap her head around it, around Cat and Alex having parallel universes existing in their heads, wondered how it didn’t drive them both insane.

“A little,” Cat admitted, around a mouthful of mushu pork, handling her chopsticks with practiced ease. “Sometimes I do miss D.C. – I did good work there, and I was trying to claw my way up the ranks to launch a presidential campaign at some point in the next ten years – but I’m not upset that I ended up back here. CatCo was my first love, and leaving was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do.”

“Well, I’m pretty sure Cat Grant, Queen of all Media could mount a pretty impressive presidential campaign all on her own,” Kara said, awed but not surprised by Cat’s revelation, “if that’s still something you wanted.”

“I don’t know. I think I’d relish it, and god knows there’s a lot I’d like to change, but…” Cat trailed off, her eyes meeting Kara’s. “It’d involve moving across the other side of the country, and giving up a lot of things, privacy included. Before, I’d have been perfectly happy to dedicate myself to a twenty-four-seven job because I had nothing else going for me, but now… now I have this, us, and I’d hate to jeopardise that.”

“We could figure something out, though, if it’s something you feel like you need to do.”

“I don’t know if it is,” Cat admitted. “I’m happy here, with what I’m doing now – I still get to make a difference, but for the most part I get to leave my work behind at the office when I leave for the day.”

“You’re not itching to dive?”

“Oh, Kara, me leaving was never just about that.”

Of course, she knew that _now_ , but at the time, it would have been unimaginable.

“But no, I’m not. I have CatCo, I have my charities, I have Carter and now I have you – I don’t need anything else.”

She wondered when she’d get used to Cat being so candid, so unguarded, wondered if it would ever stop taking her by surprise. She loved it, though, loved that she wasn’t holding herself back, because it made her feel like _she_ didn’t have to hold back, that she could let herself fall as hard and as fast as she pleased.

“Is it weird for you, being here?” Cat turned the question back on Kara. “Having me back in charge? I imagine it’s a different workplace than you remember.”

“It is, but that’s not a bad thing, even if it’s taken some getting used to, and occasionally having people come up to me and talk to me like they know me when I have no idea who they are.”

“How many times has that happened to you?” Cat asked, lips twitching in amusement, and Kara sighed.

“Oh, Rao, _so_ many times. There’s a guy who sits two desk over from me who talks to me for like, ten minutes every morning and I still don’t have any idea what his name is.”

“Point him out and I’ll tell you.”

“You know everyone’s names?”

“Of course I do.”

“So calling me _Kiera_ for three years?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Cat said, blinking innocently at Kara. “You must have misheard me.”

“Liar.”

“It was… a misguided attempt to keep you at arm’s length.”

“Worked out well for you, huh?”

“Outstandingly.” But Cat’s smile was fond, her eyes shining as they met Kara’s. “Do you… do you like things being the way they are?” She looked hesitant to ask the question, like she feared Kara would say that she’d liked things better before.

“Yes.” Kara reached out to curl a hand around the back of Cat’s and squeezed. “Because at least two days a week, there’s the chance that I might run into you, and no matter how much I enjoyed things before, nothing will ever be able to compete with that.”

“You really missed me that much?”

“Of course I did, Cat. Even if I… even if I didn’t feel the way I did about you, you had such a huge influence on me, on _everyone_ , and the place was never the same after you left. I still loved working here, but it… it felt different. I missed you. And obviously I don’t know what things were like, in the timeline where you stayed, but… I know if you’d still been around, I’d have been coming to you for advice all the time, using you as a soundboard, letting you shoot down all of my terrible ideas and help me become even half as good a journalist as you.”

“You did do all of that,” Cat confirmed. “But you’ve never needed me to be a great journalist, Kara – look at what you’ve achieved without me. A _Pulitzer_.”

“You kept up with my work?”

“Of course I did.” Cat looked offended by the mere suggestion. “I read all of your articles. I thought about reaching out to congratulate you, but I… I didn’t want to intrude.”

“You wouldn’t have been. I tried to call you, a few times, after you left.”

“I know, and I’m sorry I never picked up but I… I knew if you asked me to come back, I would’ve done it without thought. And even if you hadn’t, the temptation, hearing your voice again… I knew I wouldn’t be strong enough to resist it.”

“I can’t believe I could’ve stopped you leaving. I should’ve fought for you.”

“You didn’t know there was anything to fight for,” Cat said, her voice soft. “There’s no point dwelling on the past – you can’t change it now.”

“I mean, _technically_ \- ”

“You’re not allowed to ask any of your super-powered friends to meddle with our history. I’ve heard the horror stories, I know it never works out.”

“Did you ever meet them? Barry and Sara and the others?”

“I met Barry in this life, if you recall – you looked stunned when I deduced who he was, presumably because you realised I might not be as blind to secret identities as you feared – but no, I never met any of the others. You talked about them a lot, though. And they often pulled you away for top-secret world-ending missions.”

“Well, now that we’re all on the same Earth, we can change that, if you want.”

“Game nights with the superfriends?”

“Maybe,” Kara said with a shrug. “If that’s something you’d want.”

“I want whatever makes you happy, Kara. They’re your friends, and they’re important to you, so of course I want to meet them. Whenever the world isn’t ending and they’re free, that is.”

“The summer’s usually quiet.”

“Summer it is, then.” Cat glanced at her watch with a sigh, and Kara knew that their time together was about to come to an end.

“Time to get back to work?”

“Unfortunately.” Cat looked as reluctant as Kara felt, and she wondered what would happen if she suggested that she fly Cat back to her apartment so that they could spend the day alone together, instead.

“Can I… can I take you out on a date?” Kara asked, feeling inexplicably nervous even though she knew Cat was going to say yes. “Later this week?”

“I’d like that,” Cat said, and when Kara leant over to kiss her, she was smiling. “Where are you taking me?”

“I don’t know yet.” She had some ideas, but hadn’t settled on any. “I want it to be a surprise.”


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm afraid we are reaching the end point of this story - this is the penultimate chapter. I've also upped the rating, part of this one fringes on nsfw, and the last chapter definitely does.
> 
> Hope you enjoy!

Kara’s instructions for their date had been vague, and Cat felt a nervous flutter of anticipation in her stomach as she waited in her apartment for the other woman to arrive.

Cat Grant didn’t do butterflies, but when it came to Kara… everything that Cat thought she knew about herself got tossed out of the window.

On their other first date, Kara had taken her to an old-school drive-in theatre that had opened for a few short months one summer. They’d parked under a tree, shielded towards the back of the lot, and reclined the seats in Cat’s convertible, spending most of the movie kissing instead of watching, and it had been the perfect start to her greatest relationship.

They’d both been nervous, Kara more visibly than Cat, and it had been their first proper test, the first time they’d realised that they really could exist together in a space outside of CatCo or either of their apartments, that they weren’t making a huge mistake.

Cat hoped that today would have a similar ending.

She and Kara had managed to snatch a few precious hours together over the course of the week, but between the four jobs they had between them, they’d never been able to linger long.

Which probably wasn’t a bad thing – it gave them both time to really think about what they were doing, a chance to feel things out, to take it slow, but god, that was its own form of torture, because Cat still missed the version of Kara that had never really existed.

She missed falling asleep wrapped in Kara’s arms, waking up next to her in the morning. She missed cooking her an insane amount of food to sustain her, their movies nights on the couch with Carter curled up beside them.

She knew that those things would come in time, that things couldn’t just go back to the way they were overnight, not when they were starting all over again. Patience had never been her strong suit, but now she needed handfuls of it, had to keep stopping herself from reaching out to touch Kara whenever they were together, terrified of being too familiar, of making Kara feel like she should do something she wasn’t comfortable with, and learning to let Kara set the pace was something she knew she would have to constantly work on.

But.

It would all be worth it, in the end, if she could be even just a fraction as happy as she’d been with Kara the first time around.

“Cat?” Kara’s voice sounded from behind her, along with a faint tap against glass, and Cat rose from where she’d been waiting on the couch, walking into her bedroom and finding Kara on her balcony.

“I was expecting you to use the front door,” Cat murmured as she pulled open the glass door, smiling when Kara leant forward to press a gentle kiss to her lips.

“Well, it’ll be a lot quicker to fly to where I have planned, so I thought this was easier,” Kara said with a shrug, her cape fluttering gently in the wind.

“You _do_ know I hate heights, right?”

“I won’t let you fall.” Kara’s voice was filled with confidence, and Cat forgot some of her nerves when Kara stepped close, the familiar scent of her perfume invading her senses. “Is this… is this okay?” Kara asked, tentative as she slipped her arms around Cat’s waist.

It meant they were pressed tightly together, the material of Kara’s suit rough but familiar against her cheek, and Cat relaxed into her arms.

“Of course.” Cat closed her eyes when she felt her feet leave solid ground, winding her arms around Kara’s back and holding on for dear life, the wind rushing through her ears as they hurtled through the air.

It wasn’t the first time Kara had flown her somewhere, wasn’t even the tenth, but Cat had never learned to love the feeling, never felt that sense of freedom that she knew Kara revelled in whenever she took to the skies, and she was flooded with relief when Kara set her down, her knees a little wobbly as she blinked open her eyes.

“That wasn’t too terrible, was it?” Kara asked, seemingly unwilling to move away, her arms still tight around Cat.

“It was… acceptable,” Cat replied, tilting her head back so that she could look Kara in the eye, and she sighed when Kara took the opportunity to lean down and press their lips together.

She was a little less hesitant each time, growing in confidence every time Cat melted into her, and when Kara’s hands slipped under the thin material of her shirt to rest against bare skin, Cat couldn’t help but groan, her tongue licking into Kara’s mouth as she slid her hands over Kara’s shoulders to tangle into her hair.

When Kara pulled away, they were both breathless, and it was only then that Cat realised she was completely oblivious to her surroundings – Kara could have dropped them into the centre of the Grand Canyon, for all she knew – and took the opportunity to get her bearings.

“Kara, this is… this is beautiful.” They were in a clearing, surrounded by trees so tall that they nearly blotted out the sun, a stream babbling nearby, and in the centre a large blanket was spread out across the grass, a picnic basket beside it.

“You like it?” Kara ducked her head, seemingly nervous, and Cat leant up on her toes to brush away her worry with a kiss.

“I love it.”

“I wanted to do something different,” Kara explained, taking Cat’s hand and leading her over to the blanket. “I discovered this place by a chance a few months ago chasing an alien – I hoped that in your timeline, that hadn’t happened so I haven’t already brought you here.”

“It’s perfect,” Cat said, folding herself down onto the ground with as much grace as she could manage, and wondering how long Kara had agonized over today.

“It’s not too much like our other date?”

“You didn’t ask your sister?”

“No, I… I wanted to hear it from you.”

“I see.” Cat was touched by the gesture – she had no doubt that it would be so much easier for Kara to approach her sister with all the questions she had, that she could probably learn her and Cat’s history in a night with Alex’s help, but she’d chosen not to, chosen for them to share in their past together, no matter how uncomfortable it might make her, and Cat loved her all the more for it. “Well, sit down,” Cat said, patting the space beside her, “and I’ll tell you.”

“Let me just get changed first,” Kara replied, voice quiet as she gestured to her suit. “I don’t… I want to be Kara for this.”

She disappeared too quickly for Cat’s eyes to follow, and when she next blinked, Kara had materialised back in-front of her, wearing a floaty skirt and a patterned blouse.

“That’s better,” she said, throwing herself down onto the blanket beside Cat. “You were saying?” Kara listened with rapt attention as Cat recalled all the details she could remember from the movie in the parking lot. “That sounds really nice.”

“It was, but so is this.” It was nice to be out in nature, birds chirping all around them, the air warmed by the rays of run that escaped through the branches of the trees, a welcome break from the concrete jungle she spent most of her days in.

“I brought food. I don’t know if your tastes have changed in the past three years, but I thought I’d take a chance and hope that they hadn’t.” Kara handed her a salad from Cat’s favourite restaurant and an iced tea, and Cat smiled her thanks.

When they’d finished eating, Kara stretched out on her back, one arm tucked under her head, and she wrapped the other around Cat’s back when she followed her down, pulling Cat into her side.

“Do you think this will ever get less weird?” Kara asked, turning her face towards Cat, and it took her a moment to answer, because framed in the glow of the sun, Kara was so beautiful that it almost hurt to look at her.

“Honestly? I don’t know.” It certainly hadn’t in the past week, but Cat knew that it was still early days. “But it’s worth it – for me, at least.”

“It is for me, too. I just… I feel bad, because you’ve already done all of this before, and because I can tell you’re having to hold yourself back and I hate that you’re doing that because of me.”

“Hey, look at me.” Cat reached up a hand to cradle Kara’s jaw when she turned away, wanting to look her in the eye. “I don’t want you to rush into something you’re not ready for because of me. I can control myself.”

“What if… what if I can’t?” Kara asked, her voice soft and achingly vulnerable. “I’ve never… I’ve never been with someone human before. What if I hurt you?”

“You won’t.” Cat slid her hand from Kara’s cheek and into her hair, twisting soft strands of it around her fingers.

“How do you know that?”

“Because you never have before.”

“Never?” Kara looked like she didn’t believe her. “Even, um, when we were… when we - ”

“Had sex?” Cat put her out of her misery, and the blush that stained Kara’s cheeks was adorable. “Not unless I asked you to, no.” Cat watched Kara’s eyes widen, a strangled noise escaping the back of her throat, and chuckled. “Sorry. That probably wasn’t a fair thing to say.”

“N-no it’s… it’s okay.” Her cheeks were still crimson, and Cat wondered if they’d ever return to their normal shade. “I really never lost control of my powers?”

“Never.”

“How?”

“Obviously I can’t tell you the exact details, but… you knew that I trusted you not to, and _you_ trusted _me_ to tell you if I was ever uncomfortable. It was a learning curve, for both of us, but… it wasn’t exactly a chore.”

“I bet it wasn’t,” Kara murmured, a gleam in her eye that made Cat’s stomach twist and her mouth go dry. “With all that in mind… I want to try something.”

“Oh yeah?” Cat asked, arching an eyebrow. “What’s that?”

In lieu of an answer, Kara shifted her weight, pressing Cat onto her back and sliding on-top of her, supporting her body weight with her arms bracketed on either side of Cat’s head.

“Is this okay?” Kara asked, her voice low, and Cat could only nod because she didn’t trust herself to speak. “You’ll tell me if I hurt you?”

“Yes.” She forced the word out because she knew Kara needed to hear it, and then she threaded her fingers through Kara’s hair as she leant down to kiss her.

Having Kara pressed up against her was electric, and Cat knew she’d never get tired of this feeling, Kara’s lips greedy as they moved against her own, tongue sliding against Cat’s as Cat scraped her nails over Kara’s scalp.

Kara’s mouth moved over the side of her jaw and down to her neck, pressing open-mouthed kisses to her skin, and it took every ounce of Cat’s willpower not to arch her back or her hips against the thigh that lay between them, her hands fisting in Kara’s hair, pulling tight with the effort to keep herself still, but that only seemed to spur Kara on even more, teeth nipping at her pulse point.

“ _Fuck_.”

“Are you okay?” Kara stilled instantly, and Cat managed to blink her eyes open to meet Kara’s gaze, and she wanted to swear all over again at the look in them, dark and hazy with desire.

“God, yes,” she sighed, and that seemed to placate Kara, her mouth returning to Cat’s skin, trailing over her collarbones and then back to her neck, seemingly content to see what sounds she could draw from Cat’s lips.

“You don’t have to hold yourself back, Cat,” Kara murmured into the crook of her neck. “You can touch me.”

“I don’t want to do anything you’re not comfortable with.”

“You trust me not to hurt you – trust me to tell you if I don’t want something.”

“Okay.” Cat settled one hand on Kara’s hip, and when she slid her fingers up and under the material of Kara’s blouse, resting her palm on the small of her back, she felt Kara’s breath stutter against her skin.

She urged Kara’s lips back up to meet her own with the hand still fisted in her hair, and she slid her other hand up and over Kara’s back, feeling taut muscle beneath her touch. She hesitated when her fingers brushed against the clasp of Kara’s bra, instead curving her fingers around her side, splaying them wide across her ribcage, feeling the beat of her heart against her palm, matching the frantic pounding of her own.

Kara shifted, leaning her weight on just one arm, and when she wrapped her free hand around the back of Cat’s to pull her upwards, until she was cupping one of Kara’s breasts, they both groaned at the feeling.

“I want this,” Kara murmured, her voice husky against the side of Cat’s jaw. “I know it’s hard, but please try and stop doubting that.”

Kara’s lips were back at her neck, Cat’s skin aflame wherever she kissed, and she tried to take Kara’s words to heart, to push her doubts away, sliding deft fingers beneath the cup of Kara’s bra and brushing her thumb against Kara’s nipple.

Teeth nipped at her neck and Cat tilted her head to give Kara better access, sliding her other hand beneath Kara’s shirt, until she was teasing both of her nipples with the pads of her fingers, and when she tugged, Kara’s moan was music to her ears.

“I feel like I’m at a disadvantage again,” Kara said, her breathing ragged as she lifted her head to meet Cat’s gaze. “You already know exactly how to touch me, but I’m flying blind.”

“You’re doing just fine so far,” Cat replied, her own voice breathy, but that didn’t seem to ease the insecurity in Kara’s eyes. “Does it… does that bother you?”

“Not really. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s a little weird, but then so is everything else about this situation, I just… I want to make sure you feel good, too.”

“Oh, Kara, trust me when I say that that’s never been a problem before.”

“N-never?”

“Never. Maybe I’m not the only one who needs to stop doubting I want this, hm?”

“Yeah, you’re right.” Kara ducked her head, shy look in her eye. “It’s just… sometimes it’s so hard to believe that this is real. That I’ve really got you in my arms.”

“Trust me when I say that I know the feeling.”

That seemed to ease some of Kara’s worry, and when she next leant down to kiss Cat, it was filled with a hint of desperation. She nipped at Cat’s bottom lip when Cat squeezed her breasts, her hips shifting against Cat’s in the most delicious way.

Kara’s hand fell to Cat’s waist, curving around her hip until her fingers were digging into her ass, encouraging Cat to grind against the thigh between her legs and fuck, she felt like she was on fire wherever they touched.

“M-maybe we should stop before we get too carried away,” Cat said when she managed to tear herself away from the heat of Kara’s mouth, her heartbeat pounding in her ears.

“Yeah, you’re probably right.” Kara’s eyes were hooded, her breathing ragged as she reluctantly rolled onto her back, staring up at the sky. “So as far as first dates go, how did I do?”

“Wonderfully.”

“You’re not just saying that?”

“I’ll never lie to you, Kara. I promise you that.”

“Have you ever lied to me before? In this life, I mean, not while we were together.”

The question caught her off-guard, and Cat had to think about the answer. “Lying isn’t a habit I’ve ever endeavoured to have, but while you were my assistant… probably. To keep you from knowing how I really felt about you. To let you keep you believing that I didn’t know your super-secret.”

“When did you know?”

“Oh, Kara, I’m sorry to say that you never really had me fooled. Your body double was enough to make me doubt myself, but not for long. I knew without question that it was you when you hugged me that first time on my balcony. I thought it was a bit of a co-incidence that you and Supergirl wore the same perfume.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

“Because I knew I’d scared you the first time. I knew I was wrong for the way I reacted, for trying to police the way you lived your life, and you were so scared, so desperate for me to believe that you were unremarkable that… I went along with it.”

“When did I come clean?”

“That first night, when you kissed me. You were Supergirl, remember – I think there was a part of you that feared I was only interested in the hero.”

“But you weren’t?” Kara’s voice was soft, a vulnerability in her eyes that Cat hadn’t seen in a long, long time.

“Of course not.” Cat shifted onto her side, resting her chin in the palm of her hand so that she could look Kara in the eye. “I fell for you long before Supergirl ever came onto the scene. I don’t want you to ever doubt that.”

“When?”

“I can’t give you the exact moment.” Cat considered the question as she let her other hand fall onto Kara’s stomach, fingers tracing the shapes on her shirt. “But I knew you were something special the first day we met. That interview… you were unlike all the others that came before you. You intrigued me, and I kept waiting for the day to come when you’d fail, when you’d disappoint me, because everyone did, at some point, but… you never did. You always got the job done, you were always there when I needed you, you always knew exactly what I needed and when, were there every morning with a latte and that gorgeous smile. I treated you horribly, but you never shied away from the ugly parts of me. I never stood a chance, Kara.”

Kara looked up at her with wide eyes, and Cat’s hand stilled against her ribcage. “Too much?”

“No.” Kara shook her head, reaching up to wrap a strand of Cat’s hair around her finger. “No, I… I like this. I like that you’re so open with me.”

“Yes, well, that took a lot of time.” Cat’s smile was wry. “As you well know, I’ve never been very good at opening up to people. I’ve been so unlucky in love that I always wondered what was the point, when they were going to leave anyway? But over time, with you, I… I trusted that you were going to stay.”

“And then I ruined it.” Kara’s voice was quiet, her eyes stormy as she clenched her jaw, and Cat shook her head, smoothing her thumb across Kara’s cheek.

“I don’t want you to think like that, Kara. What happened wasn’t your fault and regardless, we’re here now, _together_ , and the rest of it doesn’t matter.”

Kara turned her head to press a kiss against Cat’s palm, her skin tingling beneath her lips. “I know, and I’m glad we are, but… none of that would have happened if I wasn’t Supergirl. Have you ever wished that I wasn’t? That I was human?”

“Never.” She traced her fingers over Kara’s cheek, along the strong line of her jaw. “I may have fallen for Kara rather than Supergirl, but she’s still an integral part of you, Kara. You’ve been shaped by your experiences of trying to wrangle your powers, of learning control after losing everything, trying to find a place for yourself in this world you found yourself on. If you weren’t from Krypton, you wouldn’t be the woman you are today, the person I fell in love with, and there isn’t a thing I’d change about you. Do I sometimes wish that you were safer? That you weren’t out there risking your life each and every day, putting yourself in the line of fire? Of course I do, but I’d never expect you, or dream of asking you, to hang up your cape. And you wouldn’t be the Kara I knew if you ever did.”

“I’ve missed hearing you talk,” Kara said, lips quirking into a fond smile. “Your inspirational speeches. You always know exactly the right thing to say.”

“Oh, not always,” Cat murmured, with a smile of her own. “I’ve been known to put my foot in it with you on more than one occasion.”

“Oh yeah? Like when?”

“Ah, that would be telling. There are some secrets I’d like to keep.”

“That’s no fair.” Kara’s pout was adorable, and Cat couldn’t help but lean down to kiss it away.

“I’m sure it’ll happen again,” Cat replied when she leant back. “You do have the ability to make me lose my train of thought.”

“Okay, that I don’t believe.”

“It’s true.”

“How?”

“A multitude of different ways.” Cat’s voice turned soft, her index finger trailing along Kara’s collarbone. “Sometimes you make it hard to think when you look at me a certain way, or whenever you touch me.” She could feel the flutter of Kara’s pulse as her fingers settled at the base of her throat. “The way you kiss me, like you’re worried it’ll be the last time.”

“You make it hard for me to think, too.” There was a breathless note to Kara’s voice, affected by Cat’s touch. “Sometimes I think it’s a wonder I can say anything at all.”

“Well, you’re managing just fine so far. There hasn’t been too much nervous rambling.”

“That’s probably on the way.”

“That’s alright – it’s cute.”

“It is not cute.” Kara’s nose wrinkled, and Cat had to disagree. “I dread to think how nervous I was around you when we first got together.”

“You weren’t too bad. I think it helped that I was nervous, too.”

“Once again, I find that hard to believe.”

“I was! It’s not like I had the best track record when it came to relationships, with three failed marriages to my name. I’d driven them all away, over time, and I was terrified I’d do the same thing to you, only it was so much worse because I… I felt so much more deeply for you than I ever did for them.” That was one of the reasons she’d tried so hard to keep Kara at bay – she didn’t know how she’d survive if it came to an end. “And then I was scared it wouldn’t work at all, because of the age gap, because I had a son, because you used to be my assistant, because we’d be in the media spotlight from the get go. Our first date, I was so glad we didn’t go to a restaurant because I was so sick with nerves that I don’t think I’d have been able to eat a thing.”

“That’s how I felt about today,” Kara admitted, her hand settling on top of Cat’s and tangling their fingers together. “I know we both need space to get used to the way things are but I… whenever we’re apart, I can’t help but worry that you’re going to change your mind, or that we won’t work but then I see you and it’s like… all of that fades away, and everything just feels so _right_.”

“I know what you mean.” Her apartment felt too big, too empty, without Kara’s energy filling up the space, anxiety putting a pressure on her chest that eased whenever Kara was near. “But I think being together twenty-four seven might get old quick.”

“I don’t know, I averaged around ten hours a day by your side back when I was your assistant with no issues. And then I didn’t even get perks like being able to kiss you whenever I want.”

“I think that would’ve been frowned upon by HR.”

“Did we have to disclose it? Our relationship?”

“God, that was a mortifying afternoon of paperwork.” Cat groaned at the memory, glad that that, at least, wasn’t one that would have to be repeated. “Yes, we did. I didn’t want people spreading any unsavoury rumours if they caught wind of our relationship, so we thought it would be best to get out in-front of it. Of course, it didn’t stop a few employees making rather inappropriate comments, but it could’ve been a lot worse.” The worst of them had been directed at her, rather than Kara, but it was nothing that Cat hadn’t heard before. “The media, on the other hand… well, they had a field day, as I’m sure you can imagine, although they did quiet down eventually. I think we’re now classed as a power couple.”

“Really?”

“Mm. You’ll see, if you ever want to accompany me to an event – you get used to the paparazzi, after a while.”

“I don’t know about that, but I would like to be your date, next time you need one. Don’t want Katherine storming into your apartment again.”

“You don’t have to come because of that, Kara. I don’t care what the media thinks about the state of our relationship – if you weren’t comfortable with it, you’d never have to be by my side for anything like that again.”

“I know, but I want to,” Kara assured her. “I want to show you off.”

“Well, I _do_ have another gala next weekend…”

“I’ll be there.”

“Really?” Cat tried not to look too hopeful – the last one had been awful, because she’d been alone, hadn’t had anyone to steer her away when her eyes started to glaze over, someone to vent to, and she’d gotten too used to having Kara by her side, having someone to turn to when she needed to breathe.

“Barring any emergencies, yes.” Kara slid a hand around the back of Cat’s neck, tugging her down and kissing her until they were both dizzy. “It’s starting to get dark,” she said when they parted, the sun starting to descend behind the trees. “We should probably get back to the city, even though I really don’t want this day to end.”

“Who says it has to end? Do you have plans for the rest of the night?”

“No. Alex is away with Kelly for the weekend, so I was just going to hang out at home, catch up on TV.”

“Well, if you want to come home with me, instead, you can.”

“Carter wouldn’t mind?”

“Carter would be overjoyed.” He’d been almost as excited for this date as Cat had been, hadn’t stopped talking about Alex and Kara and how much fun they’d had last weekend for days afterward. “But you don’t have to, it’s up to you.”

“No, I want to,” Kara decided, and Cat tried not to look too overjoyed. “Let’s go.” She climbed to her feet before offering out a hand to Cat to pull her up, too. Then, in a blur of superspeed, Kara was back in her suit, and the blanket and their food had been packed back into the basket, slung over Kara’s arm as she stepped close to Cat.

“You ready?” She asked, arms already looped around Cat’s waist, and Cat leant up on her toes to steal one last kiss before nodding, squeezing her eyes shut tight as Kara hurtled them into the evening sky.


	11. Chapter 11

Kara landed lightly on Cat’s balcony, and felt Cat let out a sigh of relief as her feet touched solid ground, the frantic beating of her heart starting to ease as she unwound her arms from around Kara’s neck.

“Told you I wouldn’t drop you.”

“There’s always a risk.”

“I’d catch you if I did,” Kara promised. “I always have before.”

“Oh, like that time you threw me off my balcony, you mean?” Cat asked, arching an eyebrow, and Kara felt her cheeks flush because that hadn’t exactly been her finest moment.

“I wasn’t in the right state of mind then,” she replied, not that that was really much of an excuse. “And I also caught you when you fell out of that plane.”

“Instead of the President of the United States, yes, I remember. Perhaps I should’ve guessed then how you really felt about me, unless you already knew she was an alien.”

“I did not,” Kara admitted, a little sheepishly. “Honestly, I wasn’t even really thinking of her, just of you, and how I couldn’t lose you.”

“Yes, well, you didn’t. And you won’t.” Cat stepped away, curling a hand around the balcony door and turning to look at Kara over her shoulder. “You sure you want to come in?”

“Yeah.” She was having the best day, and no part of her wanted it to end. That morning, she’d woken up with butterflies swarming in her stomach, terrified that she’d somehow mess up, that Cat would hate the idea of a picnic in the woods, that they’d find they had nothing in common and Cat would end things then and there.

But none of that had happened, and Kara felt like she knew Cat better than ever, felt more connected to her than ever, loved that she’d continued to be candid and vulnerable, that she’d answered everything that Kara had thrown at her as honestly as possible.

“Carter?” Cat called out as she walked through her bedroom, and Kara quickly changed back into her civilian clothes before following her inside her apartment.

“In here.” Carter’s voice echoed from down the hall, and they found him curled up on the couch, PlayStation controller in his hand and a game paused on the huge flatscreen TV. “I’d ask how your date went, but judging from the smile on your face and the fact that Kara’s here, it was good.”

“He never used to be this cheeky,” Cat said, looking at Kara and heaving out a fake sigh. “I think it was your influence on him, I blame you entirely.”

“Oh, because that’s not something you’d say?” Kara asked, raising an eyebrow. “Pretty sure he takes after you, cheek and all.”

“Well, we’ll agree to disagree,” Cat decided. “Carter, have you eaten?”

“No, not yet.”

“I’ll go and see what I can rustle up, then, if you’re both hungry?”

“I mean… you know I’m always hungry.” Kara’s stomach grumbled to illustrate her point, and Cat’s exasperation was fond.

“I could eat, too,” Carter said, and when Cat disappeared into the kitchen, Kara hesitated for a moment before settling down beside him on the couch. “Do you wanna play?” He asked, nodding toward the spare controller that was sitting on the coffee table. “I can add you in.”

“If I’m terrible it’s not going to mess you up, is it?”

“Nah.” He handed it to her, messing around with some of the buttons on his own until the TV screen split in two. “You’re on the left. Try not to shoot me.”

“Are you not going to tell me what any of these buttons do?” Kara asked, when no further explanation seemed to be forthcoming.

“It’s _way_ more fun if I let you figure it out for yourself.” Carter’s grin was wide, and Kara thought that _cheeky_ was definitely an apt description of him as he unpaused the game and left Kara to her own devices.

Superpowers did not a gamer make, but at least Carter seemed to be amused by her struggle. She wouldn’t be beating him at videogames any time soon, but it was nice to spend some time with him one-on-one, even if he _did_ spend most of that time teasing her for being terrible.

“You’d better have done your homework, young man,” Cat said when she briefly emerged from the kitchen, perching on the arm of the couch beside Kara and patting her sympathetically on the shoulder when she died for what was probably the tenth time.

“I finished it when I got back from robotics this morning.”

“How’s your project coming along?” Kara asked, swearing under breath as her character got shot before she could duck behind a wall.

“It’s good. They made me team leader.”

“You didn’t tell me that, sweetheart, that’s wonderful news.”

“It only happened this morning,” Carter said with a shrug. “And I didn’t want to bother you guys on your date. Where did you go, anyway? I want details. Just not any of the gross stuff.” He wrinkled his nose in a way that suggested he’d been witness to a few too many things he deemed ‘gross’, and Kara felt her cheeks warm despite the fact that she had no memory of them.

“We had a picnic in the woods,” Cat told him, as she was retreating back into the kitchen when a timer started beeping. “It was wonderful.”

“It’s good to see her smiling again.” Cater kept his voice quiet, his gaze focused on the screen. “Well, the both of you. I’m glad you’re back together.”

“Yeah?” She knew that Cat had talked things over with him, that in the past she had had his approval to be with his mother, but it still meant a lot coming from him directly.

“Of course.” He hit pause on his controller so he could turn to look at her. “You make her happy, happier than I’ve ever seen her.”

“Even now?” There was still a part of her terrified that things would be different this time, that Cat wouldn’t want her, that she’d been shaped by her experiences in a world without Cat in a way that made their relationship untenable, no matter how well things seemed to be going so far.

“Kara, look at her.” He waved toward his mother, and when Kara turned and looked over the back of the couch she could see her pottering around in the kitchen. “She hasn’t stopped smiling since you got back, hell, she’s _humming_ along to the radio, have you ever seen her do that before?”

“No.” She couldn’t tear her gaze away from Cat, drinking in the content look on her face as she stirred a pot on the stove. “I haven’t.”

“What are you two staring at?” Cat asked, frowning when she caught the two of them watching her.

“Just trying to figure out what’s for tea,” Carter said quickly, and Kara wondered if she should be worried about the ease with which he’d come up with the lie.

“You didn’t think to just ask?”

“Where’s the fun in that?”

Kara watched the two of them with a smile, because it was a dynamic she wasn’t used to seeing. She’d used to think that she knew all the different sides of Cat, all her moods and her facets, but in the past two weeks, Kara had realised that there was so much more to learn.

She’d seen Cat light up whenever she spoke of Carter, but she’d rarely seen the two of them interact, and there was an intimacy to witnessing it, to being allowed into Cat’s home, to Cat allowing her to see like this, vulnerable and unguarded.

“It’s spaghetti Bolognese, by the way,” Cat informed them both, “and it’s nearly ready, if you can manage to tear yourselves away from the game for long enough to set the table?”

Both Kara and Carter were quick to obey, Carter pointing out where everything was, and they ate together as a family, Carter chattering away, looking more at ease than Kara had ever seen him. She felt herself relaxing, too, the longer she spent around both him and Cat, felt herself relaxing into a life that she’d used to have, felt like she _belonged,_ like she had a future here, like maybe things really, truly would work out, after all.

Afterwards, she beat both Cat and Carter at Catan (much to both of their annoyance), before Carter announced that he was going to bed, despite the fact that it was barely nine p.m.

“He’s giving us some time alone,” Cat said, when Kara questioned it, after Carter’s door had closed down the hall. “And far be it for me to waste it.” Cat turned towards her on the couch, wrapping a hand around the back of Kara’s neck and pulling her down for a kiss that left them both breathless. “Would you be against moving this to the bedroom?”

“N-no.” Kara couldn’t stop the tremble in her voice, even though she’d spent the night in Cat’s bed once before, but that had been when they were both hesitant and uncertain, careful and wary in the way they touched one another, a world away from the desperate arch of Cat’s hips against her thigh earlier that afternoon.

Kara’s skin still burned with the memory of Cat’s hands on her, from the noises Cat had made with Kara’s lips pressed against her, and she wasn’t sure she’d survive another round without combusting but god, she wanted it, so badly that it took her breath away.

“We don’t have to do anything, Kara,” Cat said, once they were inside her bedroom, and Kara wondered if she could hear the frantic pounding of her heart. “It’s just a little more private.”

“No, I-I know. Could I… could I spend the night?” She’d been thinking about it ever since that first night, craving the feeling of having Cat wrapped up in her arms, the soft sound of Cat’s breathing lulling her to sleep, the peaceful way she’d felt waking up to her the next morning.

“Of course you can. Let me get you something to wear.”

Kara perched on the edge of Cat’s bed as she riffled through one of the drawers, eventually producing the same clothes that she’d given Kara last time she’d been over. She changed in the bathroom, and when she emerged she found Cat folding up her supersuit, discarded on the floor when Kara had entered her bedroom earlier, and draping it over the back of the chair that sat in-front of her vanity.

“Honestly, Kara, you’re so careless with this.”

“What? It’s not like it creases.” Thankfully – Kara was pretty sure that she couldn’t get the thing dry-cleaned, and was relieved it had so far been repellent to everything that had been thrown at it, blood included.

“Still. You ought to be more careful with your super persona, it’s a miracle the whole city doesn’t know your identity by now.”

“Not that many people do.”

Cat simply levelled her with a look, and Kara huffed as she settled back down on the bed. 

“I’ve gotten better! No-one ever… no-one ever figured it out and tried to hurt you, did they? Or Carter?” That had always been her biggest fear, when it came to being in a relationship, especially with someone human. At least Mon-El could handle himself in a fight – the only thing he’d really had going for him, in the end – but Cat would be defenceless against any of the enemies Kara faced on a regular basis.

“No,” Cat said, and Kara felt her whole body relax. “That’s one thing you were always careful about. I think the public relationship between Supergirl and CatCo helped that, if you were ever spotted hovering outside my balcony. But no-one has ever, to my knowledge, put two and two together.”

“Okay, good, because I… I don’t know how I’d live with myself if I ever put you in danger.”

“Even if you did,” Cat said, draping herself over Kara’s lap, Kara’s arms immediately encircling her waist and she was glad that Cat had taken their earlier conversation to heart, wasn’t so hesitant to reach out and touch her, “then I know you’d move heaven and earth to save me. I know you wouldn’t ever let anything happen to me.”

“You have a lot of faith in me.” Kara’s voice was quiet, uncertain, because sometimes she didn’t even have faith in herself.

“You’ve never given me any reason to doubt you.”

“Even when I threw you off your balcony?”

“That wasn’t you.”

“It could happen again. Maybe not that, but… something else. Something worse.”

“There’s no point dwelling on what ifs, Kara. Not with how crazy our lives can be – who could have predicted what’s happened in the past few months? Not a single soul.” Cat’s hands ran through her hair, and Kara struggled to keep her eyes open. “Whatever happens, we’ll deal with it, together. I know to you I am, but I don’t want you to treat me like I’m fragile. I don’t want you to unilaterally decide what’s best for me, because I can guarantee that it’s you. It’s always been you, and it’s not like I don’t know the risks of dating a superhero.”

“But I’m not used to the risks of dating a human,” Kara pointed out, “and it’s going to take me a little while to adapt.”

“That’s okay.” Cat’s voice was soft, soothing, as she rested her forehead against Kara’s. “We have all the time in the world.”

//

The night of Cat’s charity gala, Kara arrived at Cat’s apartment an hour early, ready to be made over by Cat’s team of stylists.

It wasn’t something she was used to, but she was _supposed_ to be, was supposed to be well-versed in the intricacies of Cat’s social circle, and while she had some experience back from when she was Cat’s assistant, this was a different ballgame entirely.

Because back then, no-one had paid her any mind. She’d been there in the background skulking in the shadows, there if Cat needed her but tonight… tonight she was going to be paraded around on Cat’s arm, as her equal, and she was terrified.

Cat had briefed her on all the major players that would be there tonight, and had assured Kara that she’d never leave her side, but that had done nothing to ease the butterflies, and she just hoped that they could make it through the night without her accidentally doing something to mess everything up.

“I can practically hear you overthinking from here,” Cat said, once her stylists were satisfied that the both of them were camera ready, and left them to their own devices. “It’s going to be fine.”

“But what if it’s - ” Kara lost her train of thought completely when Cat turned around to face her, and she was distracted, trying to put in her earrings, her face scrunched up in concentration but god, she was beautiful, the gauzy dress a light blue to contrast with the deep red of Kara’s and she already knew without looking in the mirror that the two of them would strike an imposing pair. “Wow, you look… amazing.”

“Thank you.” Earrings successfully in, she crossed around the side of her bed to where Kara sat, stepping between her legs and draping her hands over her shoulders. “So do you. That dress looks even more amazing on you than I thought.” She traced her fingertips over one of the straps, following it down the plunging neckline, and Kara shivered when Cat’s fingers brushed against the curve of her breast. “I’d kiss you, but I don’t want to ruin your lipstick.”

“Later?”

“Oh, trust me when I say I’ve got plans for you later.” Cat’s eyes were dark, her voice low, and Kara felt her breath catch in the back of her throat, the way Cat was looking at her making her mouth dry and her stomach flip. “Shall we?”

Cat held out her hand, and Kara took it, linking their fingers together as she climbed to her feet. Cat turned off the lights as she led Kara through her apartment, Carter spending the night at Alex’s so they could work on his project, and Kara felt some of her nerves ease with Cat’s hand in hers.

“We won’t stay for long,” Cat assured her as they slid into the backseat of the car that was waiting for them downstairs. “Just enough to show our faces, and to try and wrangle a few donations. There won’t be much in the way of paparazzi, but there will be some – just try your best to ignore them.”

With that, she did at least have some experience – Supergirl had had her fair share of photo ops, after all, but somehow it felt easier to face when she was wearing her cape, when her identity was shielded from the world, drawing confidence from the emblem on her chest, from the noble line she’d belonged to back home.

She tried to inject some of that Zor-El confidence into her veins when the car came to a stop, kept her head up high and her spine straight as she stepped out onto the pavement, Cat pressing close to her side, as though she could shield Kara from the flash of the cameras that greeted them.

She let Cat pull her along, her arm linked through Kara’s, and breathed a sigh of relief once they were inside the town hall building, the sound of voices carrying through to the lobby from further within.

“Ms Grant.” Jenny appeared from the shadows, and from what Kara had observed of her over the past couple of weeks since the reset, she seemed to be a suitable replacement – she hadn’t heard Cat yelling at her like she’d used to at Eve, at the very least. “Kara.” Jenny’s gaze flickered over to her, her smile warm. “It’s good to see you two together again.”

“Things are going well?” Cat chose to ignore Jenny’s comment about the state of their relationship, a tactic that had been working rather well whenever anyone had asked them about it so far.

“Yes.” Jenny tapped at something on the screen of the tablet she held in her hands. “We’re already close to our target and the evening’s barely begun.”

“Excellent. Shall we?” Cat turned to Kara, and Kara knew that if she said no, Cat wouldn’t even hesitate to turn around and leave.

“Of course.” She took Cat’s hand and squeezed, before tugging her towards the main hall, Jenny trailing in their wake.

She found, as the evening wore on, that it wasn’t so different to being Cat’s assistant, after all. She stuck close to Cat’s side, content, for the most part, to listen to her talk, to watch the passion bloom in her eyes and her voice, didn’t have to fake the affection on her face whenever Cat opened her mouth because she was a vision, a force to be reckoned with, and Kara had so missed seeing her in her element like this.

In the past, she’d always used to envy whoever Cat had on her arm. She remembered seeing her dancing with Maxwell Lord, the disgust that had nestled deep in her stomach at his hands on Cat’s waist, the way that she’d wished it were her, instead.

But tonight, she was the one with her hand settled loosely on the small of Cat’s back, her skin warm beneath the thin material of her dress. She was the one that Cat kept turning to, checking that she was okay, she was the one who’s cheek Cat kept kissing, leaning up on her toes on the rare occasions that they found themselves alone.

“You okay?” Cat asked, after securing a big-money donation from someone on the city council, green eyes bright and sparkling with happiness, and how could Kara not be, when Cat was looking at her like that?

“Yeah, I am. I’ve missed getting to see you like this. Don’t get me wrong, I liked seeing Cat Grant, Press Secretary, but I missed Cat Grant, Queen of all Media when you were in Washington. Seeing you up close and personal, doing your thing.”

“So it’s not been as awful as you feared?”

“Not at all.” Which was a relief, because Kara knew there would be countless other events like this in her future if she and Cat were going to be long-term. “Although the food is a little lacking.” She’d been stealing hors d'oeuvres from passing waiters all night, but she’d kill for some Chinese food on the way home.

“A common complaint from you,” Cat replied, lips curving into a smile. “Shall we make our exit? We can pick something up for you on the way home.”

“We can stay for longer if you want.”

“No, I think we’ve done enough. We’re well above our threshold – we might even be able to build two shelters instead just the one we had planned. And I’d much rather enjoy the rest of my night alone with you away from prying eyes.”

“O-okay.” Kara couldn’t disagree with that, nor with the wanting look in Cat’s eyes and this woman was probably going to be the death of her but Rao, what a way to go.

Cat said her goodbyes and then led Kara back out into the cool night air, her car already idling by the curb.

“What do you want to eat?” Cat asked once they were in the back seat, her hand resting high on Kara’s thigh, and Kara almost replied ‘you’ but managed to bite her tongue just in time.

“There’s a pizza place pretty close to here.”

“Pizza it is.”

She’d eaten the whole pie by the time they arrived back at Cat’s apartment, and Cat looked like she didn’t know whether to be impressed or horrified as she tucked the empty box into a trash can on the street outside.

“You must be used to it by now,” Kara said as they stepped into the lobby, Cat pressing the button for the elevator with a manicured finger.

“I am, but it still amazes me. If I even look at a slice of pizza wrong I gain ten pounds.”

“Please,” Kara scoffed as the elevator doors opened, “you look amazing.”

“Oh, I know, but this figure takes work.”

“Well, I, for one, am very grateful for it.” Kara settled her hands on Cat’s hips and pressed her back against the elevator’s mirrored wall, revelling in the gasp it drew from her lips before ducking her head to kiss her, open-mouthed and messy, lipstick be damned.

Cat’s tongue slid against hers, her hands tangling in Kara’s hair as she hooked a leg over Kara’s hips. Kara loved the way Cat kissed her, like she’d never get enough, her nails raking over Kara’s scalp as Kara dug her fingers into the supple skin of Cat’s ass, Cat’s moan echoing into her mouth.

There was still a part of her that worried she’d hurt Cat, that she didn’t have the self-control to hold herself back when Cat was making her losing her mind, but Rao, testing the waters was fun and her confidence grew each time they were together. She’d spent the night at Cat’s place a few times over the past week, sleep the farthest thing from either of their minds, and though they’d yet to go all the way, Kara was pretty sure she didn’t want to stop tonight.

When the doors opened, Kara didn’t pull away, confident that there was no-one else around and not sure she’d care if there were. Instead, she wrapped her hands beneath Cat’s thighs to lift her up with ease, using her supersenses to guide them down the hall without crashing into any walls, lips still pressed against Cat’s.

“You can get the keys,” Cat told her, breathless and dazed as she passed Kara the bag that had been slung over her shoulder, pupils blown so wide that Kara could barely make out any green.

She snagged the keys between her fingers, unlocking the door and stepping inside only to press Cat back against it, the lock clicking shut as her mouth descended on the inviting column of Cat’s neck. Cat’s head thudded against the door, and when Kara’s teeth nipped at her pulse point her hips arched, and Kara could feel the heat of her, pressed against her stomach.

“Can I… can I undo this?” Kara’s fingers hesitated at the zipper at the back of Cat’s dress, her mouth hovering at the base of Cat’s throat.

“Yes.”

Kara was quick to comply, her fingers trembling only a little as she pulled it down. The material gathered around Cat’s hips, and Kara swallowed when she realized that Cat was bare beneath it, her hands settling on Cat’s waist, and she could feel the frantic beating of her own heart echoed in the rhythm of Cat’s, tattooing against her ribcage.

“You’re so beautiful.” Kara breathed the words against Cat’s skin, lips kissing a trail down the centre of her chest until she reached the swell of her breasts, taking a nipple into her mouth and teasing with teeth and tongue.

“Fuck, Kara.” Cat arched into her mouth, hands fisting in Kara’s hair, her hips shifting against Kara’s stomach and Rao, she didn’t know if she was going to survive the night. “Take me to bed.”

Kara was powerless to resist a command like that, not when Cat’s voice was so husky, her eyes dark and her cheeks flushed as she looked down at her, and Kara dropped her hands to Cat’s hips to steady her as she stepped away from the wall.

She set Cat down carefully in the centre of her bed, and took a moment to memorize the sight of her, half-dressed and wanting, hair mussed and chest heaving, before she shrugged out of her own dress and climbed onto Cat’s hips.

There was a reverence in Cat’s gaze as it trailed over Kara’s body, her hands settling on Kara’s thighs, thumbs rubbing at her skin, and she thought she’d be shy, being bare in-front of Cat but the way she was looking at her, like she could scarcely believe she was real, took away any desire she might’ve had to cover herself.

“Kiss me,” Cat pleased, and Kara hastened to obey, supporting her weight on one arm, braced beside Cat’s head as she leant down to press their lips together.

Cat’s hands were everywhere – nails scraping over Kara’s thighs, fingers digging into her ass, running over her back – before they paused at the clasp of Kara’s bra, twisting it open when Kara murmured ‘please’ against her mouth. She slipped her arms free of the straps before tossing it over her shoulder, both she and Cat groaning at the first touch of bare skin against skin.

“You feel so good,” Kara murmured, lips pressed just beneath Cat’s jaw. “Is this okay?” She couldn’t imagine how this must feel for her, both foreign and familiar at the same time, didn’t want to push for more if she couldn’t handle it.

“More than okay.” Cat’s hand curved around the side of Kara’s face, thumb sliding over her cheek, the soft look in her eyes taking Kara’s breath away, and Kara turned her head, pressing a kiss to the palm of her hand.

“You’ll tell me if you want me to stop? Or if I hurt you?”

“Yes.” Cat threaded her hand back through Kara’s hair as she kissed her way back down to Cat’s breasts, teasing one nipple with her tongue and the other with her fingers until Cat was gasping beneath her, her hips rocking against Kara’s thigh, tucked between her legs.

Her hands hooked under the skirt of Cat’s dress when her mouth travelled lower, easing it over her hips as Cat’s stomach muscles trembled beneath her lips. Cat’s underwear was black and lacy, and when Kara pressed an open-mouthed kiss against her sex through the thin material, Cat’s hips arched against her, hands tight in Kara’s hair as a whispered curse left her lips.

“Tell me what you want,” Kara implored, biting at the skin of Cat’s thigh, her thumbs starting to pull down her underwear.

“Anything,” Cat replied, breathless and beautiful as she was laid bare before her. “Anything as long as it’s you.”

Kara settled for pressing her mouth between Cat’s legs, finding her wet and wanting, her hands splaying across Cat’s hips to gently hold her still as her tongue dipped inside every crease and fold, wanting to find all the spots that made Cat writhe beneath her.

“Kara, please.” Cat’s breathing was ragged, her heart pounding so loudly that Kara could hear the beat of it in the thigh that was pressed against her ear, the heel of Cat’s foot digging into her shoulder blade. “Stop teasing.”

Kara’s reply was to slip two fingers into wet heat, her tongue tracing circles around Cat’s clit and it wasn’t long before she was crying out, clenching around Kara’s fingers and soaking Kara’s chin, and she didn’t stop until Cat begged her to, pulling Kara away with shaking fingers in her hair.

“You okay?” Kara asked, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand before resting her forehead against Cat’s, waiting for her eyes to re-open.

“More than okay.” Cat cupped the side of her jaw and kissed her, tongue dipping inside Kara’s mouth. “I love you. I know to you, it’s too early to say it and you might not even want to hear it, but I… I do. I need to you know that I do.”

“I know you do.” Kara shifted so that she was lying beside Cat, fingertips tracing patterns across Cat’s ribcage. “And it’s okay, you can say it. I know you’ve wanted to before.” She’d noticed the way Cat had bitten back words before, holding herself back in so many different ways, and Kara hated that she felt like she had to.

“I’m still so terrified of pushing you away.”

“You’re not going to,” Kara promised, pressing close to Cat, not wanting an inch of space between them. “You didn’t before, right? Even though you thought you would?”

“No, but - ”

“I don’t want to hear any buts,” Kara interrupted, sliding her hand along Cat’s hip. “I’m not going anywhere, Cat. How do I convince you of that?”

“By being here.” Cat’s fingers were gentle as they traced across Kara’s cheek and then the curve of her jaw. “By staying.”

“Always,” Kara promised, determined that it would be one that she’d keep, that she’d never make Cat doubt her, never make her feel the way she had on that day, just a few short weeks ago, when she’d had her memories restored. “You’re stuck with me, sorry. I don’t know how you’ll cope.”

“Oh, I think I’ll manage.” Breath caught, Cat pushed Kara onto her back with a single push, throwing a leg over Kara’s hips and shifting until she was straddling her hips, and Kara’s mouth went dry at the sight of Cat hovering above her.

“Yeah?”

“I’m not planning on going anywhere either, Kara.” Cat’s voice was soft, and a complete contrast to the wanting look in her eyes. “I’m here for as long as you want me.”

“Forever?” Kara suggested, sliding her hands up and over the planes of Cat’s back, encouraging her to lean down and sighing at the feeling of Cat’s weight settled against her.

“Forever.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I told you it would have a happy ending!
> 
> I can't thank you guys enough for all your comments and kudos, and for joining me on my first foray into canon (ish) supergirl fic for the first time in actual years. It's been fun!


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